The importance of margins. notebook, at the top, sides, and secret of neatness and clearness. Plenty of white space in a bottom of the page, is the A crowded page, without in dention of minor points or room for additions, cannot be made useful without rewriting. For the same reason each new subject should begin a new page. In loose-leaf books it is best to write on only one side of the paper, in order to facilitate later rearrangement and filing. In a bound book the left-hand page may be left blank at the time of writing, but used for later additions and corrections of the page opposite. The usefulness of a set of notes covering a term's work is much increased if running titles are written at the tops of the pages at the time of revision or of filing. CHAPTER IV WRITTEN REPORT OF A PUBLIC ADDRESS A chiel's amang ye takin' notes, And, faith, he'll prent it. - BURNS. NOTES taken in the classroom upon the five-minute talks of individual students have furnished useful exercise in an important kind of condensed writing. These brief notes could not, however, be profitably used as the basis of fuller written reports. Mere outlines of a dozen sentences dealing with an unfamiliar subject cannot be worked up into 600-word compositions. In other words, from 600 spoken words to which he has listened a student cannot manufacture 600 written words, unless he already knows more about the subject than the speaker himself. We turn therefore to another type of reporting which is something more than note-taking. This is the reporting in three- or four-paragraph essays of public addresses, sermons, lectures, chapel talks, and the like. A particular lecture or chapel talk given at the college may be assigned for the entire class to report, or free choice may be permitted. The student will, of course, take notes for his own guidance, observing the same method as in the class notes of oral expositions. Since he is reporting a thirty- or forty-minute address instead of a five-minute one, his notes will cover more space. If the discourse has a clearly marked outline, punctuated by "first," "secondly," "thirdly," "finally," he will make his notes in the systematic form illustrated on page 40. If no plan is discernible at the start, he will write down the points as they are brought out, each on a new line, and all indented to leave a margin, revising later, according to the method shown on pages 41 and 43. In either case the notes should be pinned to the finished report when handed in. As far as possible in the complete account the student should try to follow the method of reporting public addresses used by the best newspaper men. This has three well-marked characteristics which are worth imitating. 1. The first sentences contain the most striking features. - For the first short paragraph, or "lead" as it is called, a striking or epigrammatic sentence is chosen, which is quoted at the beginning of the sentence containing the name of the speaker and the occasion of his address. For example : "People who still believe that Bacon wrote Shakspere's plays are incapable of æsthetic judgment," said Professor Timothy Titus, of Jonesville College, in his lecture last night before the Brownsville Lyceum. The lecture, the second of a series on "Elizabethan Dramatists," surveyed the many theories offered to account for Shakspere's wide knowledge of life and society. 2. Direct quotation preferred. So far as possible the American reporter uses direct quotation, putting the very words of the speaker in quotation marks, instead of employing indirect discourse. The English newspaper style is apt to be more accurate and less interesting. Skill in catching the exact words of a lecturer without a shorthand verbatim report is a valuable acquirement. The ordinary freshman will be able to quote only a sentence here and there, paraphrasing the rest as best he can (without quotation marks). If he succeeds in recording correctly the principal divisions of the discourse, he will do better than most reporters. Their greatest sin is to ignore or to misrepresent the emphasis of a speaker for the sake of making "good copy." 3. Good titles.-Newspapers put a "head" or title on the report of a speech as on any other news "story." The "head" is never a mere label like LECTURE ON SHAKSPERE Professor Titus before Lyceum It always attempts, with varying success, to call attention to the leading news features of the report. In our study of narrative writing later in the course some attention will be given to this peculiar kind of title. For the present purpose it will suffice to ask each student to write a descriptive two-line title for his report, as if it were to appear in the college paper. Some of these titles may be subsequently put on the blackboard and criticised by the class. Reporting addresses is exposition. It should be noted that the reporting of a speech as required in this assignment is strictly expository writing, not narrative, though its first sentence contains narrative phrases. To reproduce the thought of another is always exposition, subject to the laws of unity, coherence, and emphasis, as already developed in connection with original material. Summary of Chapters II, III, and IV. The student has now practiced the art of exposition as applied to the use of a single source in six of its stages: (1) The mastery of printed library material (study); (2) The selection and condensation of that material in the form of a written outline (library notes); (3) The oral presentation of assimilated material before the class (oral exposition); (4) The written summary of oral expositions given by classmates (classroom notes); (5) A similar but longer written summary of a longer oral discourse (reporter's notes); (6) The written report of an oral discourse based on notes (reporter's news article). There are two more kinds of exposition based on a single source so important that they require special chapters: (7) Textbook study (Chapter V). (8) Recitation (Chapter VI). CHAPTER V TEXTBOOK STUDY Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. - BACON. STUDY is not exposition, but it is necessary to exposition. A student must interpret a fact to himself before he can interpret it to others. He must "take it in " before he can give it out; impression must precede expression. It is not true, as is sometimes alleged, that whatever one clearly conceives one can clearly express; for clear thinking may be blurred in transmission by imperfect idioms or limited vocabulary. The converse of the proposition holds good, however: whatever is clearly and originally expressed is clearly conceived. This does not cover the apparently clear recitation of the student who learns his lesson by heart and depends on memory rather than on understanding. His recitation or report is not expression at all. Expression presupposes assimilation, the making of another's thought temporarily or permanently one's own. That assimilation is the purpose of study. Study requires concentration. A college man who has deliberately planned to devote at least four more years of his life to study might be supposed to know what study is. As a rule he does not. Study usually signifies in his mind sitting up late with a book open. The eyes are focused on the book- -more or less. The mind is focused on nothing. Physical sensations from within, such as cramped muscles, the discomfort of a hard chair or the luxury of a soft one, cold or heat, headache, eyestrain, sleepiness, hunger, pass through the stream |