In the 1800s, the fashion in writing in newspapers was flowery, wordy and ponderous.

New words appear, old ones disappear, and styles of expression and presentation change.

In the 1800s, the fashion in writing in newspapers in Australia was flowery, wordy, ponderous, sometimes roundabout in the extreme.

Today, we would find it quaint, even amusing and not always easy to comprehend.

Take the first-ever editorial in the Maitland Mercury, published on 7 January 1843.

Probably written by proprietor/editor Richard Jones, it spelled out the philosophy which he and fellow proprietor Thomas Tucker intended would guide the paper henceforth.

One sentence, of more than 100 words, illustrates the style of the time: "We shall come to the discussion of any political question, whether of a general or local character, in a fair and candid spirit; and our columns will ever be open to the communications of all parties, so long as that temper and candour which we shall ourselves endeavour to exercise are preserved by them, as it is by no means our intention to gratify the predilections, feelings or prejudices of one portion of the community at the expense of another, but rather to combine the energies and talents of all for one common object - the advancement of the permanent interests of the district and the colony."

In other words, we will be fair and reasonable, and everybody else should be too!

We have a common goal, and we must head in the same direction! And, one might comment, we should ensure that readers remember how the end of the sentence is related to its beginning, and without having to go back to read the sentence again!

Now take a description in the Town and Country Journal, a popular Sydney news magazine, in 1870.

The topic was the problem of the lack of stability of the bank of the Hunter River below Maitland's High St which was prone to erosion.

Shops were at risk of being undermined. The bank was "composed of a stiff soil, intersected by a layer of loose gravel, which was wasted away by the water, leaving a vacancy which became fatal to the stability of the superincumbent mass".

In other words, it was prone to slippage!

The Mercury seemed to delight in particular in its descriptions of floods. Among the epithets it devised for the all-too-frequent inundations Maitland and nearby areas experienced were "the grim terror", "the enemy of domestic peace and comfort", "the devil", "the unwelcome visitor", "the watery fiend" and the "vicious foe".

The paper was using nicknames to capture the nature of the community's interaction with floods: fear and loathing were to the fore. Floods were an enemy, which meant they had to be fought, wrestled into submission. Reporting and editorialising were often like this.

Letters to the editor of the Mercury were similarly inventive and flowery in their language.

Correspondents often seemed to be set on demonstrating their prowess with words as much as making a point about the subject they were addressing.

Nowadays things are different.

Language in newspapers today is plainer, less complex and less convoluted, much more direct.

Arguably, there is less colour in it, but equally it is probably more informative.

Whole paragraphs are much shorter than some sentences were back then!