Doing it in Style Leslie Sellers (Pergamon Press 45s)
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CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Ashton-under-Lyne is the Mecca of tripe- eaters, but you mustn't say so in the columns of the Guardian: the style-book specifically forbids it. Nor, if you are working for Mr Leslie Sellers, may you write 'Soho is a Mecca for dirty-minded middle-aged Manchester businessmen.' (Students of the press believe that there is a recorded instance of 'Jerusalem is the Mecca of Zionists,' but the reference has been Jost.) So let us refrain from calling this book the Mecca of journalists.
So much of newspaper life consists of not getting things wrong—distinguishing Lloyds from Lloyd's, immanent from imminent, Ply- mouth Argyle from the Duchess of Argyll; avoiding doubles entendres (see Mr Sellers on the difficulty of reporting Miss Ava Gardner buying an English crumpet): sorting out eccle- siastical dignitaries (`the head of the Episcopal Church in Scotland is called "the Primus," as in stove) and noting that The Honourable is a title not used by most newspapers, except occasionally with members of the proprietor's family.' By the same token you must remem- ber which kind of Astor is which. Mr Sellers sets out to see you through these difficulties, and succeeds. But he dOes more.
We all read the local paper, with its localised sense of news values—first rule (they say) on the Oxford Mail: always get the word Oxford into the first sentence. But it has been left for Mr Sellers to tell of the Lancastrian splash sub who, when a trapeze artiste lost her foot- ing and plunged to her death, headlined the story BOLTON AUDIENCE FALLEN INTO. Mr Sellers, in fact, is fond of headlines. `stxTv HORSES WEDGED IN CHIMNEY,' Beachcomber once wrote, adding 'The story to fit this sensa- tional headline has not yet turned up.' So with Mr Sellers : we shall have to wait for his VANESSA REDGRAVE EATEN BY BEAR Or BARBARA CASTLE 'IS REALLY MARPLES' (given as an example of the use of quotation marks); but what will provoke GIANT CHEESE KILLS TWO? He returns to the homicidal cheese when writing about local bills—placards to sell the paper in a particular place—of which he suggests three: SABDEN TREACLE MINE HORROR, TIDES- WELL COW TRAPPED IN GATE, and GIANT CHEESE KILLS SEVEN AT CRICH. You will detect a'strong north-western flavour to all this, and it would be good to revive that series of Mr Sellers's youth, 'Glossop councillors we can do without.'
To our knowledge of cablese—EXPRESSTORY PISTON EXGREATHEIGHT=Ille story being carried in the Daily Express is vehemently denied at the highest level; to the study of pleasing advert- isers—keeping the headline mons RAPE Two NUNS away from the ad headed I PREFER THREE NUNS; to Fleet Street lore—vide H. Cleethorpes Roberts and his Nit Basket : to these Mr Sellers brings riches. But his book is not just a collection of fash'nable fat's and polite annygoats; still less a collection of gadgets designed to gratify the news editor. Mr Sellers wants his English correct because he wants it accurate: 'Wrong: the average Fleet Street sub-editor weighs 15 st 7 lb : Correct: the average weight of Fleet Street sub-editors is 15 st 7 lb. There couldn't be an average Fleet Street sub-editor, as anyone who's seen a collection of them knows.' Or read him on adjectives: 'there is nothing amazing, beguiling, fascinating, piquant or attractive about cluttering up a straight- forward story with words like these, most of which are used out of sheer habit.' Exactly: as Orwell said of political writing, once you are in the habit of putting 'in my opinion it is a not unjustified assumption' rather than 'I think,' it is not only easier, it is quicker. But it muddies meaning.
Our resident prodnose (see Mr Sellers on technical terms—and did you know that 'an initial letter larger than and often contrasting with the body-type and jutting up above it' is a cock-up?) says that there is a mistake on page three : 'Confederation of British Indus- tries' should be singular. But if it's in Sellers, it's probably now right.
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