This volume is the second in a series of four, each of which has been planned to cover one stage in the composition work of the secondary-school course. These books have been designed to supply material adapted as exactly as possible to the capacity of the pupils. Most of the exercises which they contain have been devised with the idea of reproducing in an elementary form the methods of self-instruction which have been employed by successful writers from Homer to Kipling. Nearly all of them have been subjected to the test of actual classroom use on a large scale. They may be used independently or as supplementary to a more formal textbook. Each volume contains rather more work than an ordinary class can do in one hundred recitations.

In each volume will be found exercises that involve each of the four forms of discourse; but emphasis is placed in BookI on description, in BookII on narration, in BookIII on exposition, and in BookIV on argumentation. Similarly, while stress is laid in BookI on letter-writing, in BookII on journalism, in BookIII on literary effect, and in BookIV on the civic aspects of composition, all of these phases of the subject receive attention in each volume.

In every lesson of each book provision is made for oral work: first, because it is an end valuable in itself; second, because it is of incalculable use in preparing the ground for written work; third, because it can be made to give the pupil a proper and powerful motive for writing with care; and, fourth, because, when employed with discretion, it lightens the teacher’s burden without impairing his efficiency.

Composition is not writing. Writing is only one step in composition. The gathering of material, the organization of material, criticism, revision, publication, and the reaction that follows publication are therefore in these volumes given due recognition.

The quotation at the head of each chapter and the poem at the end are designed to furnish that stimulus to the will and the imagination without which great practical achievement is impossible. On the other hand, the exercises are all designed on the theory that the sort of idealism which has no practical results is a snare. Indeed, the books might be characterized as an effort to find a useful compromise between those warring types of educational theory which are usually characterized by the words “academic” and “vocational.”

The specific subject of this volume is newspaper writing. The author has himself had enough experience in practical newspaper work to appreciate the difficulties and to respect the achievements of the journalist. He knows that editors must print what people will buy. It seems probable, therefore, that instruction in the elementary principles of newspaper writing, in addition to producing good academic results, may lead pupils to read the papers critically, to discriminate between the good and the bad, and to demand a better quality of journalism than it is now possible for editors to offer. If this happens, the papers will improve. The aim of this book is therefore social as well as academic. It is also vocational. Some of the boys and girls who study it will learn from its pages the elements of the arts of proof-reading and reporting well enough to begin, by virtue of the skill thus acquired, to earn their bread and butter.

For the chapters on advertising I am indebted to Mr. Karl Murchey, of the Cass Technical High School of Detroit, Michigan. Mr. John V. Brennan, Miss Grace Albert, and Miss Eva Kinney, of the Detroit Northwestern High School, have rendered me invaluable help by suggestions, by proof-reading, and by trying out the exercises in their classes. Mr. C.C. Certain, of Birmingham, Alabama, and Mr. E.H. Kemper McComb, of the Technical High School, Indianapolis, by hints based on their own wide experience and ripe scholarship, have enabled me to avoid numerous pitfalls. My thanks are due also to Mr. Francis W. Daire, of the Newark News, and Mr. C.B. Nicolson, of the Detroit Free Press, who have given me the benefit of their experience as practical newspaper men. Above all, I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Henry P. Hetherington, of the Detroit Journal, whose untimely death in June, 1914, deprived me of a never-failing source of wisdom and a critic to whose ripe judgment I owe more than I know how to describe.

E.L.M.