Judge — February 26, 1921 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

President Revsey P. Steicner, Grosce I. Sretcner James S. Mercacre Pexsrron Maxw . it AE Roitaver, Treasurer Contri 7 A. Warpron, Associate Editor E are in danger of losing one of our most val ible possessions It iscalled the English language. although it is spoken and read b ore pr ted States than in England. Jt is ours. both but we are letting it slip away many n ople in the by inherita from us and are getting nothing one-half so good in exchange. even in its utmost purity, may not y be more musical to the ear others simpler and more The English la be the best lang d better for musical expression logical in formation, and others purer in derivation, but as a means of expressing human thought in writing and speech it has held its own and is more than holding its own against all comers. It is tox the lar Kuage Others age of more people than ever before, and its use is more widely spread the world over ns of other languages. an with their growth. The different English from LL lar ges are the m all languages grow and best English we know today is the best of the time of Chaucer, ould be thrown back into that ti he might go hungry through being unable to make his wants Even in parts of England the growth of language has been so slow that today the educated Englishman ting those districts the dialect of his own countrymen. In the United States pure E: different kinds of assault that even in the short space of generation Americans may need a gle language of their fathers. inly of The country tha with different i consonants and vowels. Js and pronunciations. which We which our enterprising makers of rival weight of their authority. Inge a very If one of us s! understoc penet doesn’t know ish is the victim of so many ther dd the ithe to unders their gran ts speaking sary and certy we have large distr 1 giving different values to both omposite populat s so bi tonation gain wic in wo urrency are fertile in slang. t dictionaries too quickly give the new sciences 1 I New inventions, new trades even new religions are constantly adding new we new professions s to com: mon usage. which is on the way to ning wild. with the half our literature and our [7 isn't our spoken English only Babel. With the printing-presses ru educated supplying a good part of letter-writing at the mercy of girl stenographers, it is not strange that we are as little critical of the written as of the spoken word The newspaper is perhaps the worst enemy of good English. Even with the utmost caution the circumstances of newspaper. When o¥ production even correctness The effort used to be was a pride Was a person of authority has become a negligible quantity. Perhaps the worst examples of slipshod newspaper methe are to be found in the headlines. This would not be important ifs ma ers Were editors, there Which has disappeared many persons did not confine their reading to tion. Most frequently the heads mean nothing or three different things. Juve Bad Break in many. and they sta and out i in every daily. Here's one picked at random from today’s front PRETTY HIGH SC HOOL GIRL What the writer meant to convey was valuable tion to the effect that PRETTY HIGH-SCHOOL That might have been gleaned from t first. but it meant equally PRETTY HIGH SCHOOL-GIRL or even some such opinion as PRETTY HIGH SCHOOL. GIRL VANISHES. This isn’t impe pt as a ready-to-hand example of newspaper slovenliness. calculated to inspire by example the same kind of inexactness in its readers. VANISHES nforma- GIRL VANISHES he printing as shown at VANISHES t exce Our most widely in its wspapers aren't the only offenders. d literary weekly is so given over to sla fiction h yse that the rea might not be able to unders' fer of a past generation ithe reader of the coming generation gets a peculiar ed nin English printed with all authority of good paper, type and f our best sellers, with the wrint of a reputable publisher, are ish but bad sh And ¢ icized by critics apparently not competent to discover that lefect Our stage gives us plays quite authors not on speaking ter Their speeches are delivered by actors whose ignorance of ot offended the uneducated ear the mportance of a binding Written not in very ten they are written by rhetoric often obviously with grammar or pronunciation and accent has of the stage manager or producer. AS AINST these attacks there seem to be no defenders of American English as she should be written and spoken. Our need is not for the fine distinctions of the purist or tion in the exact use of words. but the inculcation of some f resistance to wholesale debauchery of a most important edu kind institution, comicbooks.com