The Right Article-Formatnewsletter-Format Article for Newsletter

You Are Here: Home Page » Formatnewsletter » Format Article for Newsletter

Newsletter Article

Here is Are There More Dinosaurs? formatted for a newsletter with 65 characters per line.

Are There More Dinosaurs?

by kphirst

When I was a child, I traveled a lot by train. The train cars
were nicer then. The service was better and the schedules were
more convenient and definitely more reliable. My sister still
enjoys traveling by train, but I think her enthusiasm is
influenced by her acrophobia. I limit my trains to trains of
thought - but even those aren't as reliable as they used to be.

When I was in school, I had to read Chaucer, Shakespeare and
Hawthorne. They're not the only things missing from my reading
now. What happened to punctuation? Where are the colons and
semi-colons? Commas are uncommonly prevalent, but colons and
semi-colons seem to have been removed from what I read by some
sort of literary colonoscopy.

Drug stores used to have soda fountains; and soda fountains used
to have soda jerks, who made cherry cokes, milkshakes and sundaes
- and who left the skirts on scoops of ice cream. When I was in
high school, I dated a soda jerk. My mother was happy I was
dating someone with a job. I was happy dating someone in uniform.

Soda fountains are gone and so are drive-in movies. Selling the
land became more profitable than selling tickets and snacks. My
mother wouldn't let me to go to the drive-in with a boyfriend. If
I had, there would have been two speakers outside my boyfriend's
car.

Asteroids killed the dinosaurs and cell phones are killing pay
phones. Pay phones used to be in stores, along sidewalks and
always in gas stations. Now they're gone and so is the chance to
play a public slot machine. When you pushed the coin return
button, there was always a chance you'd get back more money than
you'd put in. Cell phones have taken the element of chance away -
unless you're in an area with poor satellite reception.

Even newspapers are dying. Fewer readers equals fewer
advertisers and fewer advertisers equals fewer newspapers. People
on the run want to get their news on the run - from their car
radio, their computer or their iPhone. A world without newspapers
will be a world with new problems. What will we fold to make
pirate hats? How will we make paper mache? What will we use to
wrap glasses and dishes when we move? What will we put on the
floor when we housebreak a puppy - or maybe the National Enquirer
will survive.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
<a href="http://knightwatch.typepad.com">Take a minute to make
yourself smile</a> at 
http://knightwatch.typepad.com

Syndicated by The Right Article - www.therightarticle.com