2. Another good method, if you are fond of appearing before the public, is to request the Editor to state that “the Richard Jones who, in our police report of yesterday, was sentenced to Bridewell for shoplifting, is not the Mr. Richard Jones, the respected chiropædist of Sackville Street.”
3. If you are writing to a political newspaper, never mind about writing on the two sides of the paper, as, depend upon it, it will be a recommendation in your favour if the Editor sees you can write well on both sides.
4. You need not be particular about writing legibly, as it stands to reason, if the Editor cannot read your letter, that you will be spared the mortification of reading in the next day’s Notices to Correspondents, that “Philo-Justitiæ is an ass.”
5. It is usual in sending a statement, which impugns the character of another person, to send your name and address with it; but, as in matters of libel this is a very troublesome as well as a very expensive plan, it is better to send anybody else’s card rather than your own. By this means you avoid publicity, and have the double gratification of annoying two persons at once.
6. Inserting your death one day, and contradicting it the next, is another very cheap plan of advertising in a newspaper. Besides, you have the advantage of learning in your lifetime what your friends think of you after your death. This plan, however, will only answer once.
7. It is better, perhaps, not to send any poetry to a newspaper. We never recollect an instance of the Times inserting “A Sonnet to a Sow,” or “Lines to my Mary.”
8. Be careful of quotations, especially in a foreign language. If an editor knows his own language well, it is as much as you have a right to expect of him.
9. Never send anything to a newspaper “to be continued,” unless it is a legacy or a dozen of port.
10. Never trouble yourself in calling to see the Editor of a newspaper. It is a strange circumstance, but you might call a hundred times and always find him “out.”
Punch, 1844.