THE USE OF SHORT WORDS.

Patea Mail, 23 June 1882, Page 4

THE USE OF SHORT WORDS.

. We must not only think in words (say Horatio Seymour) but we must also use the best words, and those which in speech will pot what is in our mind into the minds of others. This is the great art which those must gain who wish to teach in the schools, the church, at the bar, or through the Press. To do this in the right way they should use short words which we learn in early life, and which have the same sense to all classes of men. The English of our Bible is good. Now and then some long words are found, and they always hurt the verses in which you find them. Take that which says, “ 0, ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to oomo ?’’ There is one long word which should not be in it, namely “ generation.” In the old version the old word “brood” used. Read the verse again with this term, and you feel its full force. 0, ye viper’s brood • who hath warned yon to flee from the wrath to come ?” Crime sometimes does not look like crime when it is before ns in the mihny folds of a long work. When a man steals, and we call it “defalcation,” we are at a loss to know if it is a blunder or a crime. If he does not tell the truth, and we are told that it is a case of “prevarication,” it takes us .some time to know just what we should think of it. No man will ever cheat himself into wrongdoing, nor will he be at a loss to judge of others, if he thinks and speaks of acts in clear, crisp terms. It is a good rule, if one is at a loss to know if an act is right or wrong, to write it down in short, straight out English.