special correspondent was an editor's wife.

* * * * *

Secondly, inattention to detail. Though this shortcoming discloses itself
in many and various ways, it is to be observed chiefly in the matter of
literary style. Women enjoy a reputation for slipshod style. They have
earned it. A long and intimate familiarity with the manuscript of hundreds
of women writers, renowned and otherwise, has convinced me that not ten
per cent of them can be relied upon to satisfy even the most ordinary
tests in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I do not hesitate to say that
if twenty of the most honoured and popular women-writers were asked to sit
for an examination in these simple branches of learning, the general
result (granted that a few might emerge with credit) would not only
startle themselves but would provide innocent amusement for the rest of
mankind. Of course I make no reference here to the elegances and
refinements of written language. My charge is that not the mere rudiments
are understood. Even a lexicographer may nod, but it surely requires no
intellectual power surpassing the achievement of women to refrain from
regularly mis-spelling some of the commonest English words. The fact that
there are niceties of syntax which have proved too much for great literary
artists, does not make less culpable a wilful ignorance of the leading
grammatical rules; yet the average woman _will_ not undergo the brief
drudgery of learning them. As for punctuation, though each man probably
employs his own private system, women are for the most part content with
one--the system of dispensing with a system.

These accusations, I am aware, have no novelty. They are time-worn. They
have been insisted upon again and again; but never sufficiently. And now
the accusing sub-editors and proof-readers seem to have grown weary of