Often he used inset illustrations, not so much to give point to his preachments, as to render them easier of comprehension to the unthinking. And always he sought the utmost of sensationalism in caption and in type, employing italics, capitals, and even heavy-face letters with an effect of detonation.
“Jollies you along until he can see the white of your mind, and then fires his slug into your head, point-blank,” Edmonds said.
With all this he had the high art to keep his style direct, unaffected, almost severe. No frills, no literary graces, no flashes of wit except an occasional restrained touch of sarcasm: the writing was in the purest style and of a classic simplicity. The typical reader of The Patriot had a friendly and rather patronizing feeling for the editorials: they were generally deemed quite ordinary, “common as an old shoe” (with an approving accent from the commentator), comfortably devoid of the intricate elegancies practiced by Banneker’s editorial compeers. So they were read and absorbed, which was all that their writer hoped or wished for them. He was not seeking the bubble, reputation, but the solid satisfaction of implanting ideas in minds hitherto unaroused to mental processes, and training the resultant thought in his chosen way and to eventual though still vague purposes.
“They’re beginning to imitate you, Ban,” commented Russell Edmonds in the days of The Patriot’s first surprising upward leap. “Flattery of your peers.”
“Let ’em imitate,” returned Banneker indifferently.
“Yes; they don’t come very near to the original. It’s a fundamental difference in style.”
“It’s a fundamental difference in aim.”
“Aim?”
“They’re writing at and for their owners; to make good with the boss. I’m writing at my public.”
“I believe you’re right. It’s more difficult, though, isn’t it, to write for a hundred thousand people than at one?”