Читать книгу Expository Writing - Mervin James Curl - Страница 11

Now the relative value of these three sources of the controlling purpose is variable. In an article for the encyclopædia the writer's reaction should be subordinated, since the reader comes to the encyclopædia for facts and not for opinion. Likewise the reader, in such an article, will be of minor importance, for the article is addressed to general ordinary intelligence that desires a straightforward statement. But as we have seen, an article on Feminism must with the greatest care watch the reader and the writer—the reader because the subject rouses both assent and opposition; the writer because the subject is of the kind that depend largely on opinion. So a theme on the problem of the hired man, or Tennyson's attitude toward science, or the reasons for attending one university rather than another, or the value of mechanical stokers, or the application of Mendel's Law to human beings will vary its purpose according to the varying importance of the three sources. Only one great caution needs to be made. Never falsify or mistreat the facts: they are the supreme thing. It is for this fault that the newspapers are most blameable: they consider their readers and their own points of view, but all too often they treat the facts cavalierly. A high reverence for the truth, and an unflinching determination to tell it are prime essentials.