There is no idea which has no word to fit it. Of course some writers must use difficult language. The ordinary reader can sometimes not understand a sentence of a book of philosophy. This is not because the philosophers do not write clearly, but because the ideas with which they have to deal are very subtle, and hard for the ordinary person to understand.
But for ordinary people writing on ordinary things there is no excuse for writing so as not to be clearly understood, or for writing in such a long and round-about way that people are tired instead of refreshed by reading. Nor is there any excuse for the use of words and phrases which are vulgar or too colloquial for the subject; yet how often is this done in the modern newspaper. It may seem unnecessary to speak to boys and girls of the faults of newspaper writers. But the boys and girls of to-day are the newspaper writers and readers of the future, and the habits which young writers form cling to them afterwards. Of course many of the faults which the worse kind of journalists commit in writing would not occur to boys and girls; but one fault leads to another. The motive at the root of most poor and showy writing is the desire to "shine." The faults which seem so detestable to the critical reader seem very ingenious and brilliant to the writer of poor taste. To the journalist, as to the schoolboy and the schoolgirl, the golden rule is, "Be simple."
Let us see what some of the commonest faults of showy and poor writers of English are--always with the moral before us that they are to be avoided.
One great fault of newspaper writers and of young writers in general is to sprinkle their compositions thickly with quotations, until some beautiful and expressive lines from the greatest poetry and prose have almost lost their force through the ear having become tired by hearing them too often. Some such phrases are--
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof:"
all fine and picturesque lines, the apt quotation of which must have been very impressive, until, through frequent repetition, they have become almost commonplace.
A similar hackneyed fault is the too frequent application of the name of some historical or Biblical personage to describe the character of some person of whom we are writing. It is much more expressive now to describe a person as a "doubter" than as a "doubting Thomas," though the latter phrase may serve to show that the writer knows something of his New Testament. The first man who called a sceptic a "doubting Thomas" was certainly a witty and cultivated person; but this cannot now be said of the use of this hackneyed phrase. Again, it is better to say a "traitor" than a "Judas," a "wise man" than a "Solomon," a "tyrant" than a "Nero," a "great general" than a "Napoleon;" for all these names used in this way have lost their force.