Journalism for Women Part 6

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_ tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs 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 lat.i.tude of carelessness and error is allowed to obscurer performers in obscurer sheets.

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 pa.s.sably 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 quant.i.ties 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 G.o.ds, exchanging at intervals brilliant repartee with the beings who write. Round these are supposed to hover boys, compositors, porters, famous contributors and timid aspirants, and in the underground distance is the roar and vibration of vast steam machines which disgorge papers more quickly than one can count.

The reality is perhaps different from this picture--how different the aspirant will realise when she has at last obtained a position in an office. Having obtained such a position, she may congratulate herself that the most trying part of the apprenticeship is over. Henceforward she will be among those who can put her in the right way. She will no longer need the a.s.sistance of a handbook; it is only the unattached beginner, working (so pathetically) without guidance and in the dark, who needs that.

One thing, however, may be said about the newspaper office. It is as strictly a place of business as a draper's shop or a bank. Many women- journalists fail to recognise this fact. They do not see that in an office the relations of people must be first and foremost official; that social considerations, and even considerations of animal comfort, must be put aside in order that Business may have a clear road.

I have met in newspaper offices the sprightly woman who martyrises herself because she must work in a room with other women whose dullness and primness jar on her vivacities; the woman who is aggrieved because winter is warmed for her by a gas stove instead of an open fire; the woman who feels insulted because male a.s.sociates do not accord her the elaborate ritual of deference to which she has been accustomed in drawing-rooms; the woman who arrives late because she is tired, and blandly offers to "make up the time at night;" the woman who says, "I forgot to do so and so, I'm _so_ sorry," and stands like a spoiled child smilingly expectant of forgiveness; and other women of a similar kind.

A vast number of women engaged in journalism, I verily believe, secretly regard it as a delightful game. The tremendous seriousness of it they completely miss. On no other a.s.sumption can the att.i.tude of many women- journalists towards their work be explained. Therefore, my final words to the outside contributor, as I leave her on the threshold of an office, are these: Journalism is not a game, and in journalism there are no excuses.