Boil it Down '

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 23

Boil it Down '

In his advice to >oung writers, Dean Swift penned this crowning < wisdom ' : ' Whenever you have written anything you think particularly fine, strike it out.' A more homely an d more needful, ' wisdom ' was thrown into metrical form "in the following stanza of a ' pome ' :—: — ' When writing an article for the press, Whether prose or verse, just try To express your thoughts in the fewest words, And let them be crisp and dry. And when you think that your task is o'er, And is done exactly brown — Jiibt look it over again, and then Boil it down.' With the pen, as with the tongue, the more it runs on the less the weight it bears. But where there is a certain wordacihty with ather, it> too often accompanied by the tendency to ollow the example of the gold-beater and beat out a pin-head of thought till ,t covers much space of time or paper-surface