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 5 · column 5 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
zac is “the flagship member of a new fleet of antidepressants.” Sink that ship!
Rule No. 3 forbids employment of the most stupid phrase ever put to use by an editorial writer. Alas, in December the editor informed us, with portentous insight, that “it remains to be seen whether average American will be well served by the health reform package.” What profundity is here!
Rule 4 teaches us that a great newpaper—and the Times is a great newpaper—ought not to publish sentences that have the aspects of leftqyer hash. In January the Times reported from Atlanta that lawyers said “Mr. Parks took advantage of the financial naivete of Ira Jackson and Mr. Wilboum to arranged loans and make other business transactions that are now under investigation.” There was a sentence that needed help.
Moving on: Rule 5 advises against sentences that wander aimlessly on, past parenthetical curves, around a semi-colon and through a dashed interpolation. In the Times paper, Rule 5 often is abused:
“Since then, Ms. McLaughlin has
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