A motion that. the Institute of Journalists consider the appointment of a small committee to draft a scheme for establishing an authotitative body to advise newspapers on the purity of the English language and the simplification of spelling was considered by the institute when its annual conference was resumed at Keswick last month. Mr. Gregory Pearce, of Bexley Heath, had written to Mr, Bernard Shaw asking whether, if the proposal were adopted, he, as a member of the institute, would be prepared to serve upon such a committee and asking for his opinion of the proposal.
Mr. Shaw replied: "I am too old to undertake further activities. The simplification of spelling is hopeless—therefore what we want is an enlarged alphabet, like the Russian, which can spell the English language, which our present Latin alphabet cannot.
Discussing the motion, Mr. G. Aitchison, of Surrey, said the English language was the material in which the journalist worked, no matter how he, botched it or rough-hewed it. Once the Hollywood blight got hold of English as it was today, it acted like.a scourge.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.