lines, half dissipating itself in twenty yards, until the steady
outpour of the green smoke gave it reinforcement and it made
headway. Then, creeping forward from tuft to tuft, and preceded by
an acrid and parching whiff, the curling and tumbling vapor reached
the English lines in a wall twenty feet high.

As the grayish cloud drifted over the parapet, there was a stifled
call from some dozen men who had carelessly let their protectors
drop. The gas was terrible. A breath of it was like a wolf at the
throat, like hot ashes in the windpipe.

The yellowish waves of gas became more greenish in color as fresh
volumes poured out continually from the squat iron cylinders which
had now been raised and placed outside the trenches by the Germans.
The translucent flood flowed over the parapet, linking at once on
the inner side and forming vague, gauzy pools and backwaters, in
which men stood knee deep while the lighter gas was blown in their
faces over the parapet.


FAULTS IN DICTION. Since newspaper reporters and correspondents are
called upon day after day to write on similar events and to write at top
speed, they are prone to use the same words over and over again, without
making much of an effort to "find the one noun that best expresses the
idea, the one verb needed to give it life, and the one adjective to
qualify it." This tendency to use trite, general, "woolly" words instead
of fresh, concrete ones is not infrequently seen in special feature
stories written by newspaper workers. Every writer who aims to give to
his articles some distinction in style should guard against the danger
of writing what has aptly been termed "jargon." "To write jargon," says