The newspaper vernacular that is used in the editorial and press rooms of any daily paper is a curious mixture of literary abbreviations and technical printing terms. It is the result of the strange mingling of the literary trade of writing with the mechanical trade of setting type. For that reason a green reporter has difficulty in understanding the instructions that he receives until he has been in the office long enough to learn the office slang. It would be impossible to list all of the expressions that might be heard in one day, but a knowledge of the commonest words will enable a reporter to get the drift of his editor's instructions.

When a young man secures a position as reporter for a newspaper he begins as a cub reporter and is usually said to be on the staff of his paper. His sphere of activity is confined to the editorial room, where the news is written; his relations with the business office, where advertising, circulation, and other business matters are handled, consists of the weekly duty of drawing his pay. His chief enemies are in the printing office where his literary efforts are set up in type and printed. His superiors are called editors and exist in varying numbers, depending upon the size of his paper. The man who directs the reporters is usually called the city editor, or perhaps the day or night city editor; above him there are managing editors and other persons in authority with whom the cub is not concerned; and the favored mortals who enjoy a room by themselves and write nothing but editorials are called editors or editorial writers. There may also be a telegraph editor, a sporting editor, a Sunday editor, and many other editors; or if the paper is small and poor all of these editors may be condensed into one very busy man. On a city daily of average size there are desk men, or copyreaders, who work under editorial direction but feel superior to the reporter because they correct his literary efforts.

The reporter's work consists of gathering and writing news. In the office this is called covering and writing stories. He is ordinarily put on a beat, or run; this is simply a daily route or round of news sources which he follows as regularly as a policeman walks his beat. The reporter's work on a special story outside his beat is called an assignment. Any hint that he may receive concerning a bit of news is called a tip. Any bit of news that he secures to the exclusion of his paper's rivals is called a beat, or a scoop.

Everything that is written for the paper, whether it be a two-line personal item or a two-column report, is called a story, or a yarn, and from the time the story is written until it appears in the printed paper it is called copy. If the story is well written and needs few corrections it is called clean copy. After the story is written it is turned over to the copyreader to be edited. The copyreader corrects it and writes the headlines or heads; then he sends it to the composing room to be set in type by the compositor. The story itself is usually set up on a linotype machine and the heads are set up by hand. For the sake of keeping the two parts of the copy together the reporter or the copyreader ordinarily gives the story a name, such as "Fire No. 2"; the bit of lead on which the name is printed is called a slug and the story is said to be slugged. If at any time in its journey from the reporter's pencil to the printed page, the editor decides not to print the story, he kills it; otherwise he runs it, or allows it to go into the paper. When the story is in type, an impression, or proof, is taken of it, and this proof, still called copy, comes back to the copyreader or the proofreader for the correction of typographical errors. The gathering together of all of the day's stories into the form of the final printed page is called making up the paper; this is usually done by some one of the editors. In like manner, the finished aspect of the paper is called the make-up.

Some stories are said to be big stories because of unusual news value. When any news comes unexpectedly it is said to break; and when any story comes in beforehand and must be held over, it is said to be released on the day on which it may be printed. The first paragraph of any story is called the lead (pronounced "leed"); the word lead is also used to designate several introductory paragraphs that are tacked on at the beginning of a long story, which may be of the nature of a running story (as the running story of a football game), or may be made up of several parts, written by one or more reporters. In general, that part of a story which presents the gist or summary of the entire story at the beginning is called the lead. The most interesting thing in the story, the part that gives it news value, is called the feature, and playing up the feature consists in telling the most interesting thing in the first line of the lead or in the headline. An entire story is said to be played up if it is given a prominent place in the paper. A feature story is either a story that is thus played up or a story that is written for some other reason than news value, such as human interest. When a story is rewritten to give a new interest to old facts it is called a rewrite story; when it is rewritten to include new facts or developments, it is called a follow-up, second-day, or follow story.

Because of the close relation between the editorial room and the printing office many printing terms are commonly heard about the editorial room. All copy is measured by the column and by the stickful. A column is usually a little less than 1,500 words and a stickful is the amount of type that can be set in a compositor's stick, the metal frame used in setting type by hand—about two inches or 100 words. A bit of copy that is set up with a border or a row of stars about it is said to be boxed. Whenever copy is set with extra space between the lines it is said to be leaded (pronounced "leded")—the name is taken from the piece of lead that is placed between the lines of type. The reporter must gradually learn the names of the various kinds of type and the various proofreader's signs that are used to indicate the way in which the type is to be set, for the whole work of writing the news is governed and limited by the mechanical possibilities of the printing office. The commonest signs used by the proofreader or the copyreader, together with instructions for preparing copy, are given in the Style Book at the end of this volume. (A complete list of proofreader's signs can be found in the back of any large dictionary.) Style is a word which editors use to cover a multitude of rules, arbitrary or otherwise, concerning capitalization, punctuation, abbreviation, etc. A paper that uses many capital letters is said to follow an up style, and a paper that uses small letters instead of capitals whenever there is a choice is said to follow a down style. Every newspaper has its own style and usually prints its rules in a Style Book; the Style Book given in this volume has been compiled from many representative newspaper style books. It sets forth an average style and the beginner is advised to follow it closely in his practice writing—for, as editors say, "uniformity is better than a strict following of style."

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