Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 5 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
gains the nice whip of a chip shot to tiie green.
True, there are times when writers deliberately want to slow the pace of their prose. If we are writing languorously, it may be better to say, “The maples had been turned to scarlet by an early frost.” My own choice still would go to, “An early frost had turned the maples to scarlet.” Anyhow, my point is that writers should stay alert to the beneficial uses of a good active verb.
This is another word of advice: Never be afraid of repetition. It is better to repeat a won! than to flee to a strained alternative. Teachers of journalism often tell the story of a correspondent in Latin America who was writing about the United Fruit Co. The writer spoke of bananas once. He spoke of bananas twice. He spoke of bananas yet a third time. On the fourth occasion the writer panicked. He spoke of the company’s trading in “The elongated yellow fruit.” One more banana would have been better.
I thought of the elongated yellow fruit a couple of years ago when the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune carried a feature story on a chicken farm. The headline read, “Incredibly, 42,000 hens lay Hillianl Farm edible ovals.” Maybe the copy editor was just trying to be funny, but the arch circumlocution didn’t come off. Both the
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