"I can only express my profound admiration, as I pass, for the genius of those men who almost automatically will dig the heart out of a 'story,' and blazon it before the reader not only with marvellous brevity and meaning, but with extraordinary appropriateness of characterisation. Can you seize, for instance, the full relevancy of a headline like
PRESBYTERIAN FALLS
TWENTY FEET
or,
PROFESSOR THRICE MARRIED
DENIES AUTHENTICITY OF BIBLE
or see how the essential point is caught when a 'head' writer places
FLORODORA GIRL EXPELLED
FROM CZAR'S CAPITAL
over an account of the latest ukase which banishes from St. Petersburg two hundred members of the Duma, twelve professors, fifty-five Jewish bankers and artists, all the labour delegates, as well as the agent of the American Plough Corporation, whose wife was one of the original sextette?
"I will conclude with what to me is an example of the art of headline writing carried almost to perfection. Suppose that at Paris a long-distance foot-race between one of our countrymen and a foreign athlete had been won by our compatriot. The Réveil would probably say, 'Armand Wins at Auteuil,' and go on to give the details. But observe what they do here. I cite the article complete, headline and text:
HAYES WINS
VICTOR IN DUAL MATCH OVER DORANDO