Thanks to the generosity of our good friend Tom Russell, an assistant professor at the UMKC School of Dentistry, Patty and I attended a fund-raiser last Saturday for Historic Kansas City Foundation.
The event, at Union Station, was called “Moveable Feast: A night out with Hemingway.”
Among other things, guests got to go on trolley rides that toured some of the places Hemingway frequented when he was a cub reporter at The Star from October 1917 to April 1918. One of those places, of course, was the former Kansas City Star building that was sold last year and is now being redeveloped into commercial and retail space.
Before we left the event, someone stopped by our table and gave each of us a gift bag, which contained, among other things, Steve Paul’s book “Hemingway at Eighteen” and a book of Hemingway quotations.
I didn’t go through all the items in the bag, however, and yesterday Patty reached into mine and pulled out a wonderful piece of Kansas City Star history. It’s a Star “style sheet” from around Hemingway’s time. The 8 1/2-by-14 sheet sets out the dos and don’ts that Star reporters needed to adhere to when writing their stories.
Later, The Star updated and expanded the “style sheet” into a “style book,” which new reporters might still be given. I don’t have my style book any more, but I’m sure the current version includes some of the tenets contained in the style sheet that was in use when Hemingway was here.
I thought many of you would be interested in hearing about some of the points that were in that old style sheet, which looked like this…
(The red marks are mine.)
Only one paragraph — the first — is general; everything else is very specific. That first paragraph says…
Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
If you’ve read any Hemingway, you know he took to heart at least the first three sentences. Consider, for example, the opening lines of one of Hemingway’s best short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.
“Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.
“I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.
“I‟ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber‟s wife said.
“I suppose it‟s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.”
Within those concise sentences, we learn two important things that make us want to read more: First, something out of the ordinary happened earlier, and, second, whatever it was was disturbing enough to make Macomber’s wife “need something” to drink.
**
Now, here are some of the more specific rules of writing the style sheet lays out.
:: Watch your sequence of tenses. “He said he knew the truth,” not “He said he knows the truth.”
:: Eliminate every superfluous word as “Funeral services will be at 2 o’clock Tuesday,” not “The funeral services will be held at the hour of 2 o’clock on Tuesday.”
:: “The police tried to find her husband,” not tried to locate her husband. To locate, used as a transitive verb, means to establish.
:: “He was ill in February,” not “He was ill during February.” During February would mean every fraction of a second of the month’s time.
:: Say “She was born in Ireland and came to Jackson County in 1874,” not “but came to Jackson County.” She didn’t come here to make amends for being born in Ireland. This is common abuse of the conjunction.
:: Don’t say “He had his leg cut off in an accident.” He wouldn’t have had it done for anything.
:: “He suffered a broken leg in a fall,” not “He broke his leg in a fall.” He didn’t break the leg, the fall did. Say a leg, not his leg, because presumably the man has two legs.
:: Say Chinese, not Chinamen.
:: The man was sentenced to be hanged,” not to be hung.
:: “He was eager to go,” not “anxious to go.” You are anxious about a friend who is ill.
:: A long quotation without introducing the speaker makes a poor lead…and is bad at any time. Break into the quotation as soon as you can, thus: “I should prefer,” the speaker said, “to let the reader know who I am as soon as possible.”
:: “The voters will choose among the several candidates,” not “between the several.” “Choose between two candidates” is correct.
:: “He died of heart disease,” not “heart failure” — everybody dies of “heart failure.”
:: Don’t say: “Three men put in an appearance.” Just let them “appear.”
:: You expect a record, not anticipate it. But you can anticipate some legal action…
:: “Portion” in almost all cases refers to food. “Portion” of an estate is correct, however.
:: Say “crippled boy,” but not “a cripple.”
:: Resolutions are adopted, not passed. Bills are passed and laws are enacted. The house or senate passed a bill; congress or the legislature enacted a law.
**
Finally, here is one of my favorites because, when I arrived at The Star in 1969, the rule was still in place:
“Motor car is preferred but automobile is not incorrect.”
Before I walked through the doors at 1729 Grand, I had been talking about “cars” — not “motor cars” — all my life.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim: There should be no comma in the title “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. A comma makes “short” and “happy” equal adjectives. That would mean his life was both short and happy; switching the order of the words would mean the same thing. Without the comma, the title means that Macomber’s happy life was short, which, I think, was the point of the story.
Damn! I knew you’d have an eagle eye on this post, Les, and there I went and screwed up! I almost misspelled Macomber as McComber but, fortunately, I went back and checked…But I missed the fact that there’s no comma…I will fix. And thanks for pointing out the error; Hemingway would have been horrified.
P.S. That’s a great, stylistic analysis of why there’s no comma and another example of why you were one of the best “slots” to ever take a seat on The Star’s copy desk.
Excellent! I thoroughly enjoyed your article!
It’s noteworthy that every style rule as laid down by The Star is horribly abused by the self-congratulatory New York Times. Every day on the Times’ front page are pieces with ridiculously long, run-on sentences and complicated first paragraphs, almost always negative in tone, and generally speculative rather than factual.
Tell that to Ex-KC Bureau Chief A. G. Sulzberger.
Got a quick story about A.G., who is now publisher of NYT. When he first came to KC, he and I met at what was then 75th Street Brewery. We happened to arrive in the parking lot at the same time. He pulled into a close-in, 10-minute carryout spot and walked in for what was about an hour-long stay….Nice guy, but it’s hard to shed that privilege thing. (He was driving a very modest car, though.)
Instead, I bet you walked through the doors.
An entertaining read.
Thanks, Gayle…After you brushed on the issue, I couldn’t find any distinction between walking in the door or through the door.
I guess walking through the door could imply plunging right through the glass or wood within the frame. On the other hand, if you walk in the door, it could imply you walked “into” it, smacking your face into the glass or wood. We’d better leave this one to Les. (See above.)
I have no problem with through vs in — just waked vs walked.
And don’t forget the lead paragraph to a story should have no more than 29 words.
Star style provided the anchor for many of us in our writing careers. Even now, its wisdom touches what I do every day. It helped me teach 10 years of reporting classes at UMKC and with advising student journalists there.
Regarding Don Hoffmann’s criticism of The New York Times…Yes, reading The Times is more like reading James Joyce than Hemingway, but both writers are great in their distinctive ways.
Wow, that is a keeper.
My first boss had been a third generation typesetter/sports writer at the Rockland County Journal in Nyack, NY before coming to Missouri. His grandfather and father wrote stories about the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers, and set them on a linotype machine. The Belton Star-Herald’s style sheet carried over some of the Journal’s stylesheet, such as “employe” spelled with one “e.” (just one less letter and therefore saving hot lead), and per cent as two words. I savored that bit of tradition because of its personal history with my editor. Of course, those quirks were abandoned when I went to work for my next newspaper, which followed the AP stylebook – even though it was a UPI newspaper. One other thing. Once when I was an editor we had a “stringer” – a lawyer who thought she might dabble in journalism – submit a feature story with a 150-word lead paragraph, the subject separated from the predicate by 148 words. As night editor at a small daily, I was exasperated, so I diagramed the sentence, printed it off poster size, then taped it on the wall with a note to the newsroom: Don’t do this! She didn’t submit a second story.
That is a funny story, Steve. What a nightmare…
Good advice from my Dad: “that” is rarely necessary.
In fact, Mike, the style sheet references the word “that,” saying:
“Avoid using that too frequently but govern use largely by euphony and strive for smoothness.”
I’d never heard the word “euphony” before; it means “the quality of being pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words.”
“Topeka” comes from a Sioux word meaning “people of the south wind”.
Topeka’s founders chose the name in 1855 because it “was novel, of Indian origin and euphonious of sound.”
When visiting family in Washington a few years ago my sister-in-law took my wife and me to the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibit I can’t remember. In another room I discovered a Hemingway exhibit. It included Hemingway’s Star stylebook, signed across the cover by Pete Wellington.
The Star’s online history section says, “Hemingway credits a Star editor, C.G. “Pete” Wellington, with changing his verbose high school writing style into clear, provocative English.”
I still have my old KC Star Style Guide (with the white cover). It’s in my home library parked next to Jack Margolis’ Reference Guide to Recreational Drugs.
Oh, how I cringe every time I read how someone “had his license suspended” or “had his leg amputated.” Sane people don’t do such things. Or unnecessary words to a phrase like “whether or not.” The “not” is not needed. Or “traded away.”
And my favorite misuse of words — “deja vu.” So many writers think that means history has repeated, but it actually means someone imagines it happening again. Oh, to wield a copy pencil again….
Yes, the copy pencil is one of the world’s most powerful instruments.