RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume C, Issue 29503, 3 May 1961, Page 28

RANDOM REMINDER

In 1945, just after the end of the War, 33,000 houses were connected to the sewerage system of Christchurch. Today more than 53,000 houses are linked up with the system (this represents an increase of 60 per cent.) and the demand for new sewerage connections is as great as ever. This shows the pressing need for more money to be invested in the Christchurch Drainage Board Loan of £300,000. This Loan is to finance essential work in hand and calls for early investment 4 7/8 per cent. Interest is paid and investments may be made at any bank, with any member of the N.Z. Stock Exchange or at the Office of the Christchurch Drainage Board, 198 Hereford Street.

C’WEALTH

Reporters on newspapers think of sub-editors as grumpy old curmudgeons who sit at desks and make unnecessary alterations to prose masterpieces sent in from the Drainage Board or Magistrate’s Court press tables. But they have a reason sometimes to despair. The world is shrinking with more rapid communications, and newspapers, to get in all the news, have to compress in all sorts of ways. Now one of the difficulties about compression is that headline writing becomes harder and harder. Some words just won’t fit into any heading type much bigger than the sort of , thing one sees when a sample is displayed when the Declaration of Independence is written on a sixpence. What, for instance, can be done with a word such as “Commonwealth”? It won’t fit into any sort of headline type (except a rare variety known as “American telescope,”

which is most unpopular with printers). Some sub-editors take the easy way out and still call it the Empire which fits much more easily, but some genius, who deserves a pay rise, has thought of the abbreviation “C wealth.” Another bad one is Eisenhower (especially when, as sometimes happens on one newspaper, a headline setter used to add two more letters and call the President “Mr Eisenhower"). Kennedy is a much shorter name, but think how much better for headline purposes Taft would have been. They got over the trouble for a while by calling Mr Khrushchev “Mr K.,” but even that becomes difficult with a Kennedy in the White House. Which “Mr K.” will they mean? Still, there can be worse troubles in the bigger countries. The “New York Times” once had a genuine front-page heading: “Oyster Bars Milk Probe.” It means, when

you read the story, that Senator Oyster (that was his name) was opposing in the State legislature a bill to investigate the town milk supply. There are all sorts of problems, and all sorts of easy words to use. “Bid” is shorter than “attempt”; “slate” is shorter than “criticise.” But the answer may lie in new dictionaries of synonyms, sub-editors, for the use of. “C'wealth” is letting down the side a bit. It reminds some newspapermen of one journalist who conserved his energies by using all the abbreviations he could think of. “Sd” for “said,” “cl” for council, etc. He surpassed himself one day at Synod. His typed report had “tn” with a ring round it, to indicate to the printer that it was an abbreviation, and the full word was to be printed. The sub-editor asked him what “tn” was an abbreviation for. “Transubstantiation, of course.” was the scornful answer.