a short signed contribution by a journalist whose fame as a chronicler of modes is unrivalled, a lady who earns the wage of a Cabinet Minister, and has indeed arrived at the highest places in her profession; and I find in the article the following--shall I call them?--lapses from the rectitude of sound writing.
Hackneyed phrases and quotations:--
"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest."
"Inclines towards the portly."
"De rigueur."
"Hold on our affections."
"Ignore the charms of."
Strange word:--
"Becomingness."
Bad punctuation:--
"So that such a jacket be cut well and worn by a woman of fairly slim proportions round the waist and hips it will be exceedingly successful, but she who inclines towards the portly should rigidly ignore the charms of the jacket with the belt." Unless this sentence has a comma after "well," it bears a meaning quite different from what the writer intended; it needs also a comma after "hips" and a semicolon after "successful."
Words wrongly used:--
"It is one of the earnest principles of my faith to commend fashion." A principle cannot be earnest, and faith cannot be an action. The writer probably means that she sincerely thinks it her duty to commend fashion.
"There are only two hats well worn in Paris just now--this style and the small velvet toque trimmed with a group of plumes." For "well," read "largely" or "extensively." Note the other fault in this sentence.
Wrong or clumsy constructions, laxity in the use of metaphors, &c.:--
"[We may] read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest their different charms." Fancy reading or learning or digesting a charm!
"I have no objection to the lion lying down with the lamb--the Persian lamb--or rather, I should say, to the sable being allied to this fur, or to the combination of black caracule, or sable with ermine; any two furs, or indeed three furs, put together, I recognise as appropriate and elegant, but the frivolous working of furs with coloured satins and silks now obtaining the affections of the many is not at all to my taste." To comment on this piece of composition would be wicked.
"There is a great fancy shown by the authorities this year to elaborate furs." In English one says "take a fancy to" but "show a fancy for."
"It is small wonder that the fashion has obtained such a hold on our affections, because it is so becoming if it is not overdone."
"A single row of white pearls next the fair or even dark throat of a woman has always a beneficial effect upon her complexion." Has a woman then two throats?
"And talking about a beneficial effect upon a woman's complexion, let me mention once again the exceeding becomingness of the new shades of blue, these being rather of the sugar-paper order of blue, but a little lighter in colour perhaps, yet having that vivid tone about it. This is freely mixed with dark blue, the lighter shade being used for making trimmings to bodices, or indeed to make an entire bodice, while the dark cloth forms the skirt and coat. The hat which completes it will take every shade of blue." Observe particularly the two "its" and the "this," neither of which refers properly to any substantive.
So much for the craftsmanship of one of our most celebrated women-journalists! When such a person, writing over her own name in the columns of a renowned and powerful paper, may thus brazenly ignore the elementary principles of composition, it may be guessed what latitude of carelessness and error is allowed to obscurer performers in obscurer sheets.
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It is not only in the apparently trivial but really important details of style that women's work falls short, but in qualities even more vital. Fashion, to refer again to that branch of journalism, is a complicated and difficult subject, requiring for its adequate treatment the utmost orderliness and lucidity. Yet fashion articles are seldom arranged with any skill, and seldom lucid. The subject is usually handled after a haphazard method resulting in misty paragraphs of which often not even the writers could explain the meaning. It is said that men cannot understand fashion articles. Certainly they cannot, but the fault is not theirs. Over and over again I have heard expert fashion-journalists confess that they had failed to comprehend the writings of their colleagues. If articles on dress were properly done, men could understand, though they might not be interested in them.
Fashion gives the widest scope for the journalist's art. The constant change, the bewildering variety of it, offer opportunities for descriptive and critical work which, if they were seized, might result in articles as interesting, as accomplished, as distinguished, as any in the literary reviews. But these opportunities are uniformly missed.
Cookery, that is to say practical cookery, gives fewer opportunities than fashion for the display of merely literary skill. It is a subject which demands from the journalist clearness and thoroughness. The average cookery article may be passably clear so far as it goes, but it is rarely thorough, and so it fails in usefulness. Writers upon cookery in women's papers have been content, without thinking upon what is really wanted, to follow the methods of cookery books, ignoring the truism that cookery books, by reason of their omissions and silences, are valuable only to efficient cooks, who stand in no deep need of them. It is to the inexperienced cook that cookery articles are designed to appeal, and therefore they should be exhaustive, describing processes exactly, measuring quantities with precision, taking nothing for granted, leaving nothing to the imagination. That cookery articles, even if read, are certainly not acted upon, is proved by the monotony of the suburban dinner. And they are not acted upon because the reader finds them incomplete, "sketchy," and superficial.
It would be possible to take all the other subjects coming within "woman's sphere" in journalism, and to show that women have failed in the treatment of them to reach even a moderate standard of competence. Look, for another instance, at the reports of weddings and society entertainments, all done after one execrable model, dull and perfunctory.
* * *
I bring this general indictment in order that the eyes of the aspirant may be opened to the opportunities which await her. A brilliant future lies before the woman who will devote to these neglected women's subjects skilled craftmanship and the enthusiasm of an artist, of which surely they are as worthy as anything else in journalism. At present it seems as if the women who write for women are content to remain all their lives mere amateurs of the pen; the one who first puts herself to the trouble of becoming an expert may rely upon making a sensation in the world of editors.
Chapter XI
Conclusion
It is not part of my scheme to deal with newspaper offices, and so disturb the illusions of the aspirant concerning the "glamour" of those places. To those who are outside them and would fain be inside, a newspaper office is a retreat where, amid cigarette smoke and the rumour of continual event, clever people write what they like when they like, while others, only one degree less gifted, correct, by means of cabalistic signs, proofs, with the rapidity of lightning and the omniscience of gods, exchanging at intervals brilliant repartee with the beings who write. Round these are supposed
