1 Jooked in this week at the Small House Exhibition at the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Which gives one a shoot ing picture of the way in which England is being defaced. In the Fast 10 years 2,000,000 small houses have been built, mostly of bad design and incredibly' bad Tay-out, Photographs taken from aeroplanes contrast the sensible and artistic arrangement of old-world villages, stouped about a central feature such a village green and church, with the sprawling, untidy, wasteful way in which the suburbs of our big owns are eating up the country. Materials and constructions are Mostly poor and shoddy, and sham details are plastered bout to hide bad construction: The criticism of a very useful exhibltion that one would make is that In tying to educate us to better taste, the architects have gone too far the other way. "Most of the modern de-packing-box" order; and ore design of three houses in. one Nas exactly like the tiers of trays Pvoted on a single pillar, which you in some ollie.
Miss "Ellen Wilkinson, MP,, @ening the exhibition, said that she Mould Tike to pass a law making it a Penal "offence fora speculative Hitler to build a house without en= ARSINE an architect. But what about materials used?" A most interest Towsult hag been going on. for Rice days, in. which the Bradford Tute Equitable Building Society. iults,® Mrs. Borders, of West Wick (2, Kent, for arrears In payment gage l%8 Advanced to her on a mort Gis, on the 2730 house she hed Salt. Evidence was given by two acrileets that the house. was about Touniadlly built og could be, bad ing atts, grein woodwork, "sink shun '2e, windows that would, not ty ak Moors, paper peeling from walls, groggy roof, A firm of!
Punctuation Enthroned The Archbishop of York, presenting prizes at a Wanstead school, has been dwelling upon the far greater Importance of good. punctuation than good spelling. The latter, he said. "ig one of the decencies of life, like the proper use of knives and forks. Intellectually it does not matter, But intellectually stops matter a great deal. If you are getting your commas. semi-colons, colons and full stops wrong, It means that you are not getting your thoughts right and your mind is muddied." That puts ina nutshell what the public have always felt about lawyers who, in their leases, convenants. wills and so forth never put a stop at all, But although the Archbishop's remarks about spelling are dangerous food for children, tone can see a lot in what he says about stops. Oscar Wilde, by his own account, once spent a whole morn'ng's work in putting in a comma, and the next morning in taking It out. Tt is tone of the oldest accusations against women that they have no idea of how to use stops and generally prefer dashes, Another dimeulty is the cor-ect use of capitals. For example. would you write "Regent 'Regent street" And today's Collect 9th Sunday after Trinity) uses a capital for the word after a semicolon. 'The printers of the Prayer Book' must know what they are doing, but I should ike to hear their, explanation,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.