you how to improve your outline. Perhaps two paragraphs may be combined into one; or, in delivering your speech you may discover that you need to divide some topic into two or more paragraphs. It is a good plan in the early stages of composition to present each theme orally before writing it. After you have had some practice in paragraph development you may easily write without this preliminary speaking, although it is valuable all through school and even in college.

Planning by Paragraphs. It is very difficult, as some of you have discovered, to write a single paragraph that will say anything. Our thought needs more room for development. When we attempt to restrict ourselves to a single paragraph we either speak in general terms that are not interesting or informing, or we develop some part of our subject without making any connection with the other phases of it. To avoid these two difficulties you may plan the whole composition by making an outline of topic sentences. Then you may develop the outline, paragraph by paragraph. Under this plan the actual writing of the composition may consume several class periods, or weeks, and yet the central idea will preserve a thought connection through the whole period of composition.

For example, suppose you take the subject, "Our City Needs a New Park." A particular city of about fifty thousand inhabitants has only one small city park, located in the best residential district. This city is very closely built up; the streets are narrow and crowded; and outside the school grounds there is no place for children to play. Or Sundays and holidays working people have no place to walk or sit outdoors. It is difficult to have open-air meetings or band concerts for lack of a place to hold them. This is a

condition that you might profitably study and present to your classmates. You might prepare an outline like this:

1. This city is more crowded than most cities of its size.

2. We have therefore a greater need than most small cities for parks. 3. The health of our people demands an opportunity to spend some time outdoors.

4. But our only park is situated too far from the overcrowded part of the city to be of any benefit to most of our citizens. 5. A park in the northern part of the city would promote civic interest by giving an opportunity for open-air meetings and

concerts.

6. Not only the northern section but the entire city would feel the benefits this park would afford.

Development. The student could prepare a speech to deliver before his classmates, in which he could develop each of these topic sentences by giving illustrations. Then after class criticism of the speech he could set to work to write it out, one paragraph at a time, and submit each paragraph to his teacher for criticism. By this method he could not only improve his paragraph structure and learn the principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis, but he would also avoid the rather uninteresting type of single paragraph themes.

EXERCISE

Think out topic sentences for each of several paragraphs, on one of the following subjects. Then develop the paragraphs. Making our city more artistic

Advantages of a commercial course
Learning to see beauty in nature

The care of rabbits

Proper feeding of poultry

A good poultry house

The training of a railroad engineer

The career of a nurse

II. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SCHOOL PAPER

One of the most interesting enterprises of the school is the school paper. We all like to see our writing in print, and the school paper offers every student an opportunity to gratify that desire if he is willing to work hard enough to write a good article.

A Paper Caters to a Special Class. Any publication appeals to a special class of readers. When you are at home you read your local paper because it tells about the happenings in your locality; but this paper would not interest an inhabitant of Philadelphia or of San Francisco. A banker reads with interest The Wall Street Journal, but a doctor prefers a medical journal. Naturally a school paper appeals to the members of the school, and expects to find its readers among the students. We must bear in mind, then, when we write for the school paper, that we should write what will be of interest to a majority of the students.

STYLE OF ARTICLES

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Timeliness. Another point to remember in writing for any paper is the matter of timeliness. Your daily newspaper will give a column to the meeting of a political committee that took place yesterday; but it will not give a line to a report of a committee that met a week ago; that event is no longer news. As very few schools publish a paper oftener than once a week, and the majority only once a month, it is necessary to bear in mind that much that would be of interest in a daily paper has no place in a weekly or monthly publication.

Good Taste. Good taste is of the utmost importance in the school paper. It is the lack of good taste that causes the so-called "yellow newspapers" to be condemned by right-thinking people. Papers that print ugly stories, regardless of the truth, that deal in unpleasant personalities, and cater to depraved taste by giving accounts of crime are rightly regarded as enemies of public health and morals. School papers should in their sphere stand for the same high ideals that we demand of our best daily papers. Ugly, selfish rivalries should have no place in them. Intimate personalities, such as we sometimes find in such papers, are a breach of good taste.

Style of Articles. - Any publication is judged to some extent by the style of the articles that appear in it. Some daily papers are regarded as excellent models of good English; for example, The New York Times, The Boston Transcript, The Chicago Tribune. Some of the monthly magazines that have established a high standard of literary style are: The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, The Century Magazine, The Youth's Companion. These magazines are written by mature men and women, and they reflect the ideas of educated people. It is not expected that

a school paper should publish articles written in the style of maturity. Indeed, such writings would be as much out of place in a school paper as long trousers on a ten-year-old boy. "The style is the man" has been said by a great writer. He simply meant that each one in his writing expresses himself according to his own particular way of looking at things. So in a school paper we expect the writing to be the simple, natural expression of boys and girls. Attempts at "fine writing" or "hifaluting" expressions are ridiculous and out of place. Of course it is expected that all contributions to a paper shall be correct in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Errors in a manuscript should be cause for its rejection; otherwise the editors will waste their time in correcting the careless English of contributors instead of giving their attention to constructive work on the paper.

Items of School News. Students like to read a wellwritten account of school happenings, such as the following titles suggest:

The Mid-year Commencement

A Distinguished Visitor to Our School

The "Y" Circus

The Gymnasium Exhibition

The Parent-Teachers Association Meeting

Results of the Anti-Cigarette Composition Contest

Our Get-Together Meeting (A Community and School Meeting) The Recent School Concert

Who's Who in Junior High School (A record of pupils who have distinguished themselves in certain classes or activities)

The Christmas Play, "An Advance Visit from Santa Claus"

The Accelerated Class in Grammar

Hot Dogs and Candy (Account of a sale for benefit of the Athletic Association)

A Visit from Our Superintendent

Observance of Roosevelt's Birthday and Flag Presentation