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9. Use original expressions; avoid trite and hackneyed phrases.

10. Remember that every one of your mistakes adds to the work of your superiors.

11. Study and follow the peculiarities of the style of your paper.

12. Make your paragraphs short and concise.

13. Avoid choppy, disconnected short sentences.

14. Don't overload the first sentence by elaborating on the essential points.

15. Select the most interesting phase of the news as the "feature" of the story.

16. Put the "feature" in the first group of words at the beginning of the lead.

17. Answer satisfactorily in the "lead" the questions—Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?

18. Seldom "play up" the time or place as the feature.

19. Avoid the hanging, or dangling, participle, particularly at the beginning of the lead.

20. Don't put important particulars of the story in the last paragraphs where they may be cut off in the "make-up."

21. Avoid beginning successive paragraphs with the same phrase or construction.

22. Use an unconventional form of "lead" when the news justifies it.

23. Tabulate on a separate sheet significant statistics, lists, excerpts, or summaries, so that they may be "boxed."

24. Don't suppress news; refer all requests for such suppression to your superiors.

25. Put the mark (#), or the figures 30 enclosed in a circle, at the end of every story.

PRACTICE WORK

(1) Point out the faults in the following story and correct them by rewriting it.

Suspected of starting over a score of fires in the downtown district within a month and confessing starting nineteen, with six