Word: slipshod
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...great cultures, languages are the best means of approach. They are valuable tools, and the knowledge of their proper use is not acquired by slipshod translation and hastily prepared exercises which so often characterize the work of the student who takes French A or German A against his will. The old ruling tended to make a man contented with a reading knowledge of one and a merely elementary knowledge of the other. He is now free to substitute Latin; and if he does, he has gained a serviceable knowledge of two languages a real improvement upon the old requirement...
...fore- most in America." Hereafter there will be no excuse for any U. S. newspaper to be without at least one redeeming feature. For a moderate consideration, any city editor can now have a model of sincere, constructive, idealistic thought and writing against which to contrast the "blowsy," "slipshod" language of the news columns, the "drivel" he lets "slide under his nose," the "transparent absurdities," the "trivialities and puerilities." To his vulgar, ignorant cub reporter, a city editor may now say: "Go thou and read our column by Mr. Mencken and be a better...
...slough. Any managing editor in the land, if he has the will, can carry his paper with them. ... Is the paper trifling, ill-informed, petty and unfair? Is its news full of transparent absurdities? Are its editorials ignorant and without sense? Is it written in blowsy slipshod English, full of cliches and vulgarities-English that would disgrace a manager of prizefighters or a county superintendent of schools? Then the fault belongs plainly not to some remote man but to a proximate man-to the man who lets such drivel slide under his nose...
...untoward fact, for there are many reasons for it. One is the acceptation in such matters of mediocre standards throughout the country as a whole, a state of affairs that makes itself evident quite as much in the school and colleges as anywhere else. A society that talks slipshod English is going to produce slipshod teachers. Another reason may be summed up in the word "carelessness" a carelessness that has political cause as well as others, for there are some mistaken citizens who regard careful English as sinister affectation. Their view seems to be that one can talk as badly...
...modern literature it is not alone the writers who are to blame. The public must share fully half, and perhaps a greater part, of the burden. For so long as the makers of machinery, the builders of bridges, or the patrons of the subways are satisfied with slipshod work, "Thrillers", and the sort of books that are cluttering the presses today, so long will that class of writing crowd all the rest out of the market. There must be well-grounded appreciation, and some effort to meet the author half-way, before anything lasting can be accomplished. St. John Ervine...