Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/145

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best suited to the subject, the substance, and the occasion of the speech or report.

The single sentence quotation, as in the following form, should be used when the thought or expression which it contains is the most significant feature:


"The sentiment of the working class everywhere is for peace rather than for war," declared Charles P. Neill, United States commissioner of labor, in speaking on "The Interest of the Wage Earner in the Present Status of the Peace Movement," before the Lake Mohonk Conference of International Arbitration.


The paragraph of direct quotation is necessary when the most important point of the speech is not expressed in a single sentence but requires several connected sentences, or when the single sentence is sufficiently long to fill a whole paragraph, thus:


(1)


"The treatment for bad politics is exactly the modern treatment for tuberculosis—it is exposure to the open air. One of the reasons why politics took on a new complexion in the city in which the civic center movement originated was that the people who could go into the schoolhouse knew what was going on in that city and insisted upon talking about it; and the minute they began talking about it, many things became impossible, for there are scores of things in politics that will stop the moment they are talked about where men will listen."

So said Gov. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey in speaking on "The Social Center: A Medium of Common Understanding" at the opening of the first national conference of civic and social center development last night.