GIFT OF 
 M. Gr. Luck 
 
SENTENCES AND 
 THINKING 
 
 A PRACTICE BOOK IN SENTENCE MAKING 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN FOERSTER 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AND 
 
 J. M. STEADMAN, JR. 
 
 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 EMORY UNIVERSITY 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY NORMAN FOERSTER 
 AND J. M. STEADMAN, JR. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 C. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE ' MASSACHUSETTS 
 U ' S* A 
 
1 /y 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Sentences and Thinking is a textbook for the first term of 
 Freshman English. Although it could be used as a review 
 of fundamentals at the end of the high school course, it is 
 designed primarily for the college freshman, who can 
 scarcely be said to have mastered fundamentals in com- 
 position, but who nevertheless tends to regard himself as 
 sufficiently acquainted with unity, coherence, and em- 
 phasis. It is true that the large rhetorics are also designed 
 for the college freshman; but too often they are obsessed 
 with the sacred need of comprehensiveness, or adhere to 
 the language and modes of thought of the old mechanical 
 rhetoric. The authors of this little book, instead of seeking 
 comprehensiveness, have sought absolute essentials; in- 
 stead of following tradition blindly, have worked out a new 
 approach to Freshman rhetoric the substance being old, 
 of course, but the mode of presentation, it is hoped, fresh 
 and attractive because it is philosophical in a simple way. 
 When the freshman comes to college, he is prepared to ex- 
 change his excellent high school conviction " that authority 
 is the soundest basis of belief " for the equally excellent 
 college conviction that blind faith is " the one unpardonable 
 sin " and independent inquiry into the nature of things the 
 prerequisite to all progress. We have asked the freshman, 
 not to master " rules," but to think out the reasons behind 
 the rules in terms of the psychology of the human mind. 
 
 Chapter I, " Sentences and Punctuation," deals with the 
 appalling blunders in sentence construction that abound 
 
 M41883 
 
iv , PREFACE 
 
 during the first month of the course. Chapter II, " Sen- 
 tences and Thinking," the core of the book, is a connected, 
 constructive account of the principles of subordination, 
 parallelism, emphasis, etc. A third chapter, on " Summary 
 Sentences," offers material for training in the construction 
 of sentences through a special kind of paragraph analysis. 
 Finally, "A List of Common Errors" will enable the in- 
 structor, if he so desires, to use the book, not in addition to 
 the usual rhetoric during the first few months of the course, 
 but in place of it throughout the year. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 1. What the Sentence is I 
 
 2. The Skeleton of the Sentence .... 2 
 
 3. Phrases and Clauses 5 
 
 4. The Cardinal Error in Sentence Structure . 8 
 
 5. Misuse of Conjunctions . . . . r . 12 
 
 6. Punctuation 15 
 
 II. SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 1. Subordination 27 
 
 2. Parallelism 37 
 
 3. Emphasis . . 45 
 
 4. Economy 56 
 
 5. Vagueness 61 
 
 III. SUMMARY SENTENCES 76 
 
 IV. A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 92 
 
SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 I. What the sentence is. The sentence, as the thought- 
 unit, is the starting-point for the study of composition. 
 It should be regarded, at the outset, not as the result of a 
 mechanical manipulation of grammatical elements, but as 
 an organism, an organic whole, reproducing in words a 
 thought in the mind, as a photograph reproduces a scene. 
 It is always our first concern to see the thought clearly, to 
 get it clearly focused in our minds; to this everything else 
 is secondary, the " grammar," the " parts of speech," 
 the " syntax " that are so often the bugbear of the student 
 because they are approached wrongly. In the discussion 
 that follows, we shall look first to the thought. 
 
 What is a sentence? It is a group of words expressing a 
 complete thought. 1 It must omit nothing that is essential 
 to the completeness of the thought; and on the other hand, 
 it must admit nothing that is not essential to the thought. 
 It must be a unit, no less, no more. There are conse- 
 quently two fundamental tests for the unity of a sentence: 
 
 Test I: Does it express a complete thought? In an ex- 
 amination paper a student wrote: "Milton thought that 
 man should be humble, obedient, and thankful toward 
 God. Observing and obeying his laws." Did the student 
 really suppose that the last group of words, " Observing 
 
 1 It begins with a capital letter and is followed by a period this 
 distinguishes it from an independent clause (see pp. 5-6). 
 
2 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 and obeying his laws/' constituted a sentence? It is mani- 
 festly incomplete; it is less than a unit. 
 
 Test II: Does it contain foreign matter does it go be- 
 yond completeness and give us matter quite unnecessary 
 for the expression of the thought? Consider this sentence: 
 " At last, on the 4th of August, 1914, England declared war 
 on Germany, where I spent six weeks some years ago." 
 We do not mind learning from the writer that he spent six 
 weeks in Germany, but at this moment the information is 
 decidedly out of place, because it distracts from the main 
 idea; it violates the unity of the sentence. 
 
 What we want, then, is the whole truth and nothing but 
 the truth; the whole thought and nothing but the thought. 
 
 EXERCISE I 
 
 Point out the violation of unity in the following sen- 
 tences and indicate whether the lack of unity is due to 
 incompleteness or to overcompleteness. Apply the two 
 tests given above. 
 
 1. He works hard and keeps regular hours. While his brother 
 is a worthless spendthrift. 
 
 2. The peasants wear curiously-shaped flat caps, and grow huge 
 crops of buckwheat. 
 
 3. In his youth he read widely among the best books. Thereby 
 increasing both his reading and his speaking vocabulary. 
 
 4. Chaucer, the first English artist in poetry, ushered in the 
 modern period of English literature, and had a beard the 
 color of wheat straw. 
 
 5. The wagons were loaded heavily, and the new road was not 
 completed. 
 
 2. The skeleton of the sentence. Grammatically con- 
 sidered, every sentence consists of a subject something 
 
THE SKELETON OF THE SENTENCE 3 
 
 named and a predicate something asserted as true of 
 the thing named. \ Or we may say that every sentence con- 
 tains a subject and a verb. A verb should be carefully dis- 
 tinguished from a verbal noun (infinitive or gerund) or a 
 verbal adjective (participle). A verbal noun or adjective is 
 a noun or an adjective derived from a verb. Its function 
 in the sentence is that of a noun or an adjective; it names 
 something or it describes or limits something named. This 
 difference in use is illustrated in the following sentences: 
 
 The National Highway runs through the center of our town. 
 
 Running is good exercise. 
 
 To run three miles at a stretch requires good lungs. 
 
 In the first sentence runs is a verb; it makes an assertion 
 concerning the subject. In the other sentences running 
 and (to) run are verbal nouns. Although they are derived 
 from the verb run, they are used just as simple nouns, base- 
 ball, tennis, for example, would be used in these sentences. 
 
 Running water is purer than stagnant water. 
 
 In this sentence running is a verbal adjective. It is used 
 in the sentence in precisely the same way that the simple 
 adjective stagnant is used. 
 
 We may say, then, that a verb asserts an action concern- 
 ing the subject, whereas a verbal noun or adjective names 
 something or describes it. In the following sentences ver- 
 bals are incorrectly used as verbs: 
 
 There I enjoyed myself very much. Visiting all the theaters 
 and seeing all the exhibits. 
 
 One reason I like this book is that it is written in very simpl . 
 language. Therefore making it very easy to read. 
 
 " I think I '11 lie down a minute," he said. Forthwith springing 
 up and flinging himself on the sofa near the window. 
 
 He tried to write his letters with great care. To make them 
 neat and presentable in appearance. 
 
4 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 In this year, although each retaining its former powers, Austria 
 and Hungary agreed to establish a common administration. 
 
 Every sentence, then, whether short or long, whether 
 simple or complex, must contain a subject and a verb. 
 These are the essential elements of the sentence the 
 backbone, the skeleton, of every sentence. ^Either subject 
 or verb, or both, may be qualified or modified by the addi- 
 tion of other words; but no matter how much may be 
 added to the skeleton of the sentence the skeleton itself 
 remains the same. 
 
 EXERCISE II 
 
 Point out the skeleton (the simple subject and verb) of 
 the following sentences: 
 
 1. All summer the trip had been discussed. 
 
 2. Accompanied by a friend, I visited the Exposition grounds. 
 
 3. Have you spoken to him about our plan? 
 
 4. Not a drop of rain had yet fallen. 
 
 5. Are you going now? 
 
 6. Of the assistants, he alone slept in the house. 
 
 7. She took up the pencil without moving the book. 
 
 8. What time did he say that he would come back? 
 
 9. And in the innocence of childhood she believed him. 
 
 10. There are many reasons for my answer. 
 
 11. The words were interrupted by the sound of groans beyond 
 the door leading to the bedrooms. 
 
 12. The change from the customary spot and the necessary occa- 
 sion of such an act from the dressing hour in a bedroom 
 to a time of traveling out-of-doors lent a novelty to the 
 idle deed. 
 
 13. Through a spur of this ridge, from the Downs to the castle, 
 the old home of the family, ran a dusty and rocky road. 
 
 14. I, James Woods, President of Walker College, by virtue 
 
PHRASES AND CLAUSES 5 
 
 of the authority vested in me by the Faculty and Trustees 
 of this institution, am authorized to confer the following 
 degrees. 
 
 15. The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, sur- 
 rounded by tables and chairs with their legs upward, backed 
 by an oak settle, and ornamented in front by pots of gerani- 
 ums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary, 
 all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. 
 
 3. Phrases and clauses. There are certain groups of 
 words which are sometimes used as the equivalents of 
 nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. and which are often 
 confused with sentences. These word groups are called 
 phrases and clauses. 
 
 A group of logically connected words not containing a 
 subject and a predicate is called a phrase. Since the phrase 
 does not contain both of the necessary elements of a com- 
 plete thought, it should never, of course, be used as a sub- 
 stitute for the sentence. A phrase is often the equivalent 
 of one of the elements of a sentence, of subject or of predi- 
 cate, but is never the equivalent of both. 
 
 A group of words containing both a subject and a predi- 
 cate and forming part of a sentence is a clause. It is ob- 
 vious that a clause expresses an idea more nearly complete 
 than the idea conveyed by a phrase. Since the clause con- 
 tains both subject and verb, it might be supposed that it 
 expresses a complete idea, a thought-unit. What, then, 
 distinguishes the clause from the sentence? The sentence 
 expresses a complete thought, the clause only a part of a 
 complete thought. 
 
 Clauses are classed as dependent or as independent 
 according to the relation of the thought of the clause to 
 the complete thought of the sentence in which the clause 
 stands. If the clause expresses a thought which is not 
 
6 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 perfectly clear and definite in itself, but which depends 
 upon the thought of the rest of the sentence, it is called a 
 dependent clause. A dependent clause is meaningless when 
 it is taken by itself. The clauses " What I said," " Until 
 the road was cleared," " That he has made a mistake " con- 
 vey no complete idea; they depend for their meaning upon 
 the rest of the sentence in which they occur: 
 
 He did not hear what I said. 
 
 We waited patiently until the road was cleared. 
 
 That he has made a mistake is perfectly obvious. 
 
 These dependent clauses resemble phrases (i) because the 
 idea expressed is not complete in itself, and (2) because the 
 grammatical construction of both is that of a single word: 
 direct object, adverb, subject of verb, etc. 
 
 An independent clause is a group of words containing a 
 subject and a verb and capable of standing alone as a sim- 
 ple sentence. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showeth his handiwork." Each of these 
 clauses makes a clear and definite statement, and if written 
 alone, each would express a complete thought. The use 
 of the comma and the conjunction and, however, makes a 
 compound sentence of the two clauses. The thought unit 
 of this sentence, then, is composed of two equal and logically 
 related parts, each of which could stand alone as a complete 
 sentence. Whether such a group of words is a sentence or 
 an independent clause depends entirely upon the way it is 
 used. If it stands alone, it is a sentence; if it is used as a 
 part of a larger unit of thought, it is an independent clause. 
 
 Test: If we wish to pick out the independent clauses in a 
 given sentence, we examine each clause to find out whether 
 it could be written as a separate and complete sentence. 
 If the clause can be so written, it is independent. 
 
PHRASES AND CLAUSES 7 
 
 EXERCISE III 
 
 A. Point out the dependent and the independent clauses 
 in the following sentences: 
 
 1. I saw him, but he did not see me. 
 
 2. James was there, Jonathan was there, but Henry was not 
 there. 
 
 3. When night falls, the lake seems twice as wide. 
 
 4. The lake seems twice as wide when night falls. 
 
 5. Little men endure little men; but great men aim at a solitary 
 grandeur. 
 
 6. The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks 
 his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in Ohio, and plumes 
 himself for the night in a Southern bayou. 
 
 7. He intended to be gone a year, but returned at the end of 
 two months, harshly criticizing his folly in leaving home. 
 
 8. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it 
 hitched to everything else in the universe. 
 
 9. As he reflected upon the matter now, scowling at the picture 
 on the wall, he remembered his first trip to her home. 
 
 10. But some thoughtful person, who had seen him walking 
 across one of his fields, might have regarded him in another 
 light. 
 
 11. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in 
 blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear 
 evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape 
 is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about 
 their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will 
 glow and light up like a crown of glory. 
 
 12. The British worker might or might not be convinced of 
 Henry George's contention that the power of the landlord to 
 extort rent was the cause of increasing or continuing poverty 
 in the midst of increasing wealth; he was in any case likely 
 to be strongly moved by the contention that poverty in- 
 creased side by side with wealth, that it increased because 
 the increasing wealth was more and more unequally dis- 
 
8 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 tributed, and that the evil arose from human law and not 
 from inevitable forces of nature. 
 
 B. Compose three sentences consisting of two or more 
 independent clauses. Compose three consisting of com- 
 binations of dependent and independent clauses. 
 
 4. The cardinal error in sentence structure. The un- 
 pardonable sin in English composition is ignorance of what 
 a sentence is. The student who displays this ignorance 
 does more than confess himself untaught and unlearned 
 he brands himself as illiterate. Until he masters this ele- 
 mentary conception, he can never hope to write effective, 
 or even decent, sentences. Ignorance of what a sentence 
 is may show itself in two common forms: 
 
 a. Comma-for-period. The so-called " comma fault " or 
 illiterate comma " is the writing of two or more sentences 
 
 as if they were one the use of a comma where a period 
 
 is needed. 1 
 
 Wrong: He said he would come, when others would invent ex- 
 cuses he keeps his word. 
 
 These are manifestly two separate sentences, and should, 
 of course, be followed by periods, not commas: 
 
 Right: He said he would come. When others would invent 
 excuses he keeps his word. 
 
 EXERCISE IV 
 
 Correct the " comma fault " in the following sentences : 
 
 I. I had now come in sight of the house, I decided to wait no 
 longer. 
 
 1 Frequently the semicolon may be used instead of a period, or a comma 
 with a simple coordinating conjunction, and sometimes, when the 
 clauses are snort, contain no interior punctuation, and express intimately 
 related ideas, the comma alone is permissible. But of course any one who 
 has not yet mastered the " comma fault " should concentrate his atten- 
 tion on the basic distinction between comma and period. 
 
EXERCISE IN COMMA FAULT 9 
 
 2. Kipling wrote "The Man Who Was," this is an excellent 
 short story. 
 
 3. In the evening we reached a village, I determined to spend 
 the night there. 
 
 4. "Well, good-bye," he said," I'll see you again soon, I hope." 
 
 5. There is something in the very season of the year that gives 
 a charm to the festivity of Christmas, at other times we 
 derive a great portion of our pleasure from the mere beauties 
 of nature. 
 
 6. The climax is the crucial point in a narrative, of this the 
 author must have a definite idea before he begins to write a 
 word. 
 
 7. A thought seemed to strike him, the island had been left 
 behind and the shore lay far off in the hazy sunlight. 
 
 8. These orders were sufficient, as I well knew, they could not 
 return before morning. 
 
 9. Furthermore, the people who constitute the National Gov- 
 ernment also constitute the various states, the people gave 
 to the National Government its powers. 
 
 10. " Watch this pitcher," I said, " he isn't going to let the 
 batter touch the ball." 
 
 11. Bill lounged lazily in his leather-cushioned chair, his feet 
 were propped up at a comfortable angle. 
 
 12. My friend was an extremely gay and humorous fellow, no 
 matter how dull and blue things were, he could always make 
 the situation pleasant and delightful. 
 
 13. While still very young, I learned to play the piano, I thought 
 then that I would make a great reputation as a musician. 
 
 14. He is of medium height and of slender figure, his eyes are 
 light blue. 
 
 15. When we entered the restaurant, a waiter showed us a table, 
 he was a young man with light hair and fair complexion, he 
 wore a white coat and apron, on his head he had a soft 
 white hat. 
 
 b. Period-for-comma. The so-called "period fault" or 
 
10 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 " illiterate period " is the writing of only a part of a sentence 
 as if it were a complete sentence the use of a period 
 where a comma is needed. 
 
 Wrong: When I saw him last, he said he would come. Though 
 his desire was obviously faint. 
 
 Clearly, there is only one sentence here and only one 
 period should be used. 
 
 Right: When I saw him last, he said he would come, though his 
 desire was obviously faint. 
 
 There are three common varieties of the "period fault": 
 
 1. A phrase consisting of a noun or pronoun plus a verbal 
 noun or adjective in -ing is often treated as a complete 
 sentence. 
 
 Wrong: She cared little for society. Her chief interest being 
 
 the care of her house. 
 
 Right: She cared little for society, her chief interest being the 
 care of her house. 
 
 2. An appositive phrase is sometimes written as a sepa- 
 rate sentence. This type of error occurs most frequently 
 when the appositive is introduced by such expressions as 
 namely, as, for example, that is. 
 
 Wrong: He hated the town. As a place of residence especially. 
 
 Right: He hated the town, as a place of residence especially. 
 
 Wrong: He was praised by those who knew him best. Namely, 
 
 his brothers. 
 
 Right: He was praised by those who knew him best, namely, 
 his brothers. 
 
 3. The second of two that-cl&uses is often written as a 
 separate sentence. 
 
 Wrong: He said that he would certainly help us. That he 
 has no objection to the plan. 
 
EXERCISE IN PERIOD FAULT 11 
 
 Right: He said that he would certainly help us, that he has no 
 
 objection to the plan. 
 Wrong: Milton thought that man should be obedient to God. 
 
 That woman should obey God through man. 
 Right: Milton thought that man should be obedient to God, 
 
 that woman should obey God through man. 
 
 EXERCISE V 
 
 Correct the "period fault" in the following sentences: 
 
 1. Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common 
 sense. A substitute for true knowledge. 
 
 2. Some men cannot reason wrongly. Since they do not reason 
 at all. 
 
 3. Greatness is power. Producing great effects. 
 
 4. Carlyle said that it was a great thing for a nation to have a 
 poet to speak for it. That all people of English descent 
 thought and spoke through Shakspere. 
 
 5. He was accustomed to taking long walks alone. Thereby 
 increasing his knowledge of trees, flowers, and birds. 
 
 6. Our teacher acted like a friend to us. One who would sym- 
 pathize with us. 
 
 7. There is one night that I shall always remember. Because 
 something memorable happened to me then. 
 
 8. The citizens have the right to overthrow an unjust form of 
 government and set up a desirable form. Which will guar- 
 antee to them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 
 9. Emerson says that the priest becomes a form. That the 
 mechanic becomes a machine. And that the sailor becomes 
 a rope of the ship. 
 
 10. America is blessed with a democratic government. A gov- 
 ernment that is a model for the world. 
 
 11. A gentle tapping could be heard at my door. Which 
 caused me to pause and listen intently. 
 
 12. More than once an involuntary fear seized me. As I heard 
 above my head the muffled whirr of a ringdove's wings 
 hurrying past. 
 
12 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 13. This unknown personage wore an old coat much worn in the 
 folds. And a diamond in the frill of his shirt, and gold ear- 
 rings in his ears. 
 
 14. The quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was 
 so great as to make whole groves appear as if covered with 
 snow. The black shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanc- 
 ing the effect of the silvery splendor. 
 
 15. Calhoun and Webster debated the question of States' 
 Rights. Each one construing the Constitution in accordance 
 with his own convictions. 
 
 5. Misuse of conjunctions. The " comma fault" or the 
 "period fault" may sometimes be attributed, not to an 
 ignorance of what a sentence is, but rather to a hazy con- 
 ception of conjunctions. For example, in the illustrative 
 sentence under " Period-for-comma " (p. 10), 
 
 Though his desire was obviously faint, 
 
 the subordinating conjunction though is incorrectly used as 
 a coordinating conjunction: 
 
 But his desire was obviously faint. 
 
 The various classes of conjunctions should be carefully 
 distinguished from each other and from other parts of 
 speech. A conjunction is a word used to connect words, 
 phrases, or clauses. A conjunction used to connect ex- 
 pressions of equal rank is a coordinating conjunction. For 
 example: 
 
 He was tall and slim. 
 
 I looked for him all day, but he was not to be found. 
 
 To be or not to be that is the question. 
 
 The most common coordinating conjunctions are and, 
 or, nor ( and not), but, for, and yet. 
 
 A conjunction that connects a dependent clause with 
 the clause on which it depends is a subordinating conjunc- 
 
MISUSE OF CONJUNCTIONS 13 
 
 tion. Note that each of the subordinating conjunctions 
 in the following sentences introduces an expression that is 
 unequal in rank to the expression with which it is joined. 
 
 When I asked for him, I was informed that he had left the city. 
 Although the weather was extremely disagreeable, we decided 
 to start on our journey. 
 
 Some of the most common subordinating conjunctions 
 are although, as, because, since, if, than, that, and unless. 
 
 Certain words usually employed as adverbs are some- 
 times used to connect clauses. Such words are conven- 
 iently called conjunctive adverbs. Some of the most com- 
 mon conjunctive adverbs are so, therefore, hence, moreover, 
 also, thus, then, still, and accordingly. Although these words 
 give the beginner much difficulty, the use of them may be 
 simplified by remembering (i) that they are to be carefully 
 distinguished from simple conjunctions, and (2) that they 
 are commonly used as pure adverbs. For example: 
 
 He was so weary with the day's work that he left at the earliest 
 opportunity. (Here so is a pure adverb.) 
 
 He was weary with the day's work; so he left at the earliest 
 opportunity. (Here so is a conjunctive adverb.) 
 
 EXERCISE VI 
 
 Compose five sentences in which some of these words are 
 used as pure adverbs: still, so, then, further, likewise, conse- 
 quently, therefore, hence, however. Compose five in which 
 the same words are used as conjunctive adverbs. Now 
 reconstruct the second group of sentences in such a way as 
 to substitute coordinating or subordinating conjunctions 
 for the conjunctive adverbs. 
 
 Many of the words that we commonly call conjunctions 
 
14 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 are not always used as conjunctions. They are often em- 
 ployed as nouns, prepositions, adverbs, or other parts of 
 speech. For, since, and notwithstanding, for example, may 
 be used as prepositions or as conjunctions: 
 
 He went home for his father. (Preposition.} 
 
 He went home, for his father had sent for him. (Conjunction.} 
 
 By analogy to these words, which are used sometimes 
 as one part of speech and sometimes as another, the careless 
 writer extends the use of other words into uses which have 
 not been sanctioned. For instance, the prepositions like 
 and without are sometimes incorrectly employed as sub- 
 stitutes for the corresponding conjunctions as (or as if) and 
 unless. 
 
 Wrong: He pitches the ball like a professional does. 
 Right: He pitches the ball as a professional does. 
 
 EXERCISE VII 
 
 Copy the following sentences, inserting like, as, or as ij 
 in the proper place. 
 
 1. He does it just his brother does. 
 
 2. It looks it might rain. 
 
 3 all his brothers, he is a good athlete. 
 
 4. I wish I could sing Scotti. 
 
 5. She looks her mother, but talks her 
 
 father does. 
 
 6. I don't think you do about that. 
 
 7. Buy Liberty Bonds over here they fight over there. 
 
 Conjunctions are often used to connect sentence ele- 
 ments of equal rank or value. When so used, these con- 
 junctions are called correlative conjunctions. The most 
 common correlatives are both and; not only but also; 
 
PUNCTUATION 15 
 
 either or; neither nor; although yet (still). Care 
 should be taken to use these conjunctions only in connec- 
 tion with expressions that are of equal rank or value. 
 
 Relative pronouns (who, which, that, etc.) and relative 
 adverbs (when, where, etc.) may be classed as conjunctions, 
 since they connect dependent clauses with main clauses. 
 
 EXERCISE VIII 
 
 Correct the misuse of conjunctions in the following 
 sentences: 
 
 1. He not only went to Washington, but also to New York. 
 
 2. He both talked longer and more rapidly than I had expected. 
 
 3. They would neither dance nor would they play any of the 
 card games. 
 
 4. The nation not only had a stronger power of resistance, but 
 also it became stronger in religion. 
 
 6. Punctuation. Punctuation should be regarded as a 
 means of making our thoughts clear, not as a set of arbi- 
 trary rules to be followed blindly. The best remedy for 
 faults of punctuation is a clear understanding of the rela- 
 tion of punctuation to the written expression of our 
 thoughts. In speaking, we indicate the relation of our 
 thoughts by pauses, by changes in tone, or by variety in 
 the force of utterance. We find no trouble in deciding 
 whether a spoken sentence is a statement of fact, a ques- 
 tion, or an exclamation. " He is gone " may be spoken as 
 a statement of fact, a question, or an exclamation with ab- 
 solutely no risk of misunderstanding on the part of the 
 hearer. The marks of punctuation are symbols that have 
 become fixed by common consent and general use as the 
 means of indicating these differences in meaning. Their 
 prime reason for being is to make the meaning of the sen- 
 tence clear to the reader. Obviously, if writer and reader 
 
16 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 did not use the same set of symbols, if the same signs did 
 not convey the same message to both, these symbols would 
 be meaningless. The signs would be as unintelligible to the 
 reader as Gregg shorthand would be to a man who knows 
 only the Pitman system. It is imperative, then, that the 
 beginner should master the use of these symbols if he 
 would make his meaning clear. A study of the following 
 sentences will reveal the importance of correct punctuation : 
 
 1. When I came to college for the first time, I knew what it was 
 to be homesick. 
 
 When I came to college, for the first time I knew what it was 
 to be homesick. 
 
 2. Leave now if you wish. 
 Leave now if you wish. 
 Leave now? If you wish. 
 
 3 . Then, too, much power was given to the President. 
 Then, too much power was given to the President. 
 Then too much power was given to the President. 
 
 4. " Sweet mistress, whereas "Sweet mistress, whereas. I 
 
 I love you nothing at all, love you, nothing at all 
 
 Regarding your substance Regarding your riches and sub- 
 
 and riches chief of all, stance; chief of all 
 
 For your personage, beau- For your personage, beauty, 
 
 ty, demeanor and wit, demeanor, and wit 
 
 I commend me unto you I commend me unto you. 
 
 never a whit; Never a whit 
 
 Sorry to hear report of Sorry to hear report of your 
 
 your good welfare." good welfare." 
 
 Comma. Of the various symbols used to show the 
 relation of thoughts, the comma is by far the most 
 troublesome. Three important uses, however, cover 
 nearly all of the rules for the use of the comma: 
 
 Use I. To separate coordinate sentence elements. 
 
THE COMMA 17 
 
 a. To separate independent clauses which are connected 
 by a simple coordinating conjunction: 
 
 The rains descended, and the floods came. 
 
 If the clauses are short and the coordination is close, 
 no comma is needed: 
 
 He came and he went at his leisure. 
 
 b. To separate coordinate elements other than independent 
 clauses: 
 
 That America contributed greatly to the victory in the field, 
 and that her tremendous preparations contributed even more is 
 regarded by Marshal Foch as the decisive factor in the victory 
 of the Allies. (A long compound subject is separated by commas; 
 a short compound subject rarely requires a comma.) 
 
 Jackson had gathered his men behind a high hill near the village, 
 and had kept them in hiding there until the moment for the 
 attack came. (Long compound predicate.) 
 
 The cool, white fog drifted in from the sea, obliterated the 
 lighthouse and the islands, and lost itself in the trees, spires, and 
 towers of the city. (A series of coordinate adjectives, nouns, verbs, 
 adverbs, dependent clauses, etc., when not joined by conjunctions, 
 are separated by commas.) 
 
 Use 2. To prevent misreading. The comma is used to 
 prevent the reader from connecting words that do not 
 properly belong together. It is a common experience to 
 begin reading a sentence and to find, when we are in the 
 middle of it, that we have started on the wrong track and 
 that we shall have to begin all over again. This experience 
 is due to the fact that the eye does not see the single words 
 of the sentence, but takes them up in groups. Hence, 
 words which are sometimes one part of speech and some- 
 times another, are often misread. Note the effect of the 
 absence of punctuation in the following sentences: 
 
18 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 Wrong: Ever since he has been afraid of water and has not 
 
 since taken a boat trip. 
 Wrong: As I munched and munched a half-naked boy ran by 
 
 and disturbed my noon meal. 
 Wrong: To Paul Williams announced the good news that their 
 
 candidate had won by a majority of 20000 votes. 
 Right: Ever since, he has been afraid of water and has not 
 
 since taken a boat trip. 
 Right: As I munched and munched, a half-naked boy ran by 
 
 and disturbed my noon meal. 
 
 Right: To Paul, Williams announced the good news that their 
 candidate had won by a majority of 20,000 votes. 
 
 The omission of the comma in the first sentence would 
 make it resemble a dependent clause introduced by the 
 conjunction since. In the second sentence, the comma pre- 
 vents the reader from regarding the subject of the main 
 clause as the object of the verb in the preceding dependent 
 clause. Often, it is true, an introductory dependent clause 
 similar to our " As I munched and munched " clause is in no 
 serious danger of being misread, and yet would be more 
 immediately clear if followed by a comma. For example: 
 
 As I stood there and watched the door of the house, a man who 
 looked like my friend came out. 
 
 In the third sentence, the first comma prevents the reader 
 from connecting proper names that do not belong to- 
 gether. The second comma in this sentence aids the reader 
 in reading a series of figures. 
 
 The same principle explains the use of the comma before 
 the conjunction for to distinguish it from the preposition 
 for: 
 
 As soon as he received the letter, he went home, for his brother 
 was dangerously ill. 
 
 If the comma were omitted, in rapid reading the eye would 
 grasp as one unit " He went home for his brother." 
 
A 
 
 THE COMMA 19 
 
 Use 3. jfo set of parenthetical matter. The comma is 
 used to mark off parenthetical expressions. Any break in 
 the grammatical construction of the sentence or any inter- 
 ruption for the addition of an unessential qualifying word, 
 phrase, or clause is marked by the comma. Study the use 
 of the comma in the following sentences: 
 
 a. He was not pleased, I suppose, with my proposal. (Pa- 
 renthetical expression,} 
 
 b. Accordingly, I returned home at once. (Introductory 
 expression.) 
 
 c. Everything being ready, we started at one o'clock. (Nomi- 
 native absolute.} 
 
 d. Blake, not seeing the obstacle, ran into it. (Participial 
 phrase.} 
 
 f. The water, which was clear and pure, lapped the sides of the 
 boat. (Non-restrictive expression.} 
 
 /. My best friend, Captain Smith, has informed me of his 
 resignation. (Appositive.} 
 
 g. You know, John, how I feel about the matter. (Focative.) 
 h. Alas, I no longer have the power to refuse. (Interjection.) 
 i. An excellent address was delivered by James C. Cole, D.D. 
 
 (Titles of persons used with the proper name.} 
 j. Portland, Ore., gets its name from Portland, Me. (To set 
 
 o/ geographical expressions.) 
 k. He was born on June 21, 1888. (With dates.} 
 
 EXERCISE IX 
 
 Supply commas where they are needed in the following 
 sentences and explain the use of each comma you employ 
 (whether Use la, Use ib, Use 2, Use 30, Use 3^, etc.): 
 
 1. There is a kind of fascination in playing the game, [Use la] 
 and a man, [Use 30] no doubt, [Use 30] becomes carried away 
 by his enthusiasm. 
 
 2. I am not altogether without musical feeling but I could never 
 appreciate the operas of Wagner. 
 
20 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 3. He was a faithful though not on the whole a very capable 
 workman. 
 
 4. As a result the plan failed at the first trial. 
 
 5. The most interesting character is Macbeth the tyrannical 
 king. 
 
 6. You see now James that I was right. 
 
 7. Considering the structure of the play we see that it is divided 
 into five acts each of which has three or more scenes. 
 
 8. I stepped forth asking my friend not to wait for my return. 
 
 9. Alas I have no home. 
 
 10. Augusta Maine is a smaller city than Augusta Georgia. 
 
 11. I shall not wait longer for the train has not been reported. 
 
 12. The work was begun on July 18 1912. 
 
 13. We came to the foot of the mountain rested our horses for 
 an hour and then began the toilsome climb to the summit. 
 
 1 4. I voted for John Jones for William. 
 
 15. When he began to walk his horse slowly followed him. 
 
 16. The garrison in a panic gave up the fort and the enemy 
 entered it without a struggle. 
 
 17. These ships fitted out with the detecting device were not 
 in much danger. 
 
 1 8. The water which lapped the sides of the boat was as clear 
 as glass. 
 
 19. Hamlet who was the son of the former king regarded Horatio 
 his best friend with much admiration. 
 
 20. Everything being prepared we began to pull the boat down 
 to the shore. 
 
 2 1. The men carried axes shovels and picks. 
 
 22. The flying squirrel was one of the most interesting of the 
 little animals we found in the woods a beautiful brown crea- 
 ture with fine eyes and smooth soft fur like that of a mole 
 or field mouse. He is about half as long as the gray squirrel 
 but his wide-spread tail and the folds of skin along his sides 
 that form the wings make him look broad and flat something 
 like a cat. In the evenings our cat often brought them to 
 her kittens at the shanty and later we saw them fly during 
 the day from the trees we were chopping. They jumped 
 
THE SEMICOLON 21 
 
 and glided off smoothly and apparently without effort like 
 birds as soon as they heard and felt the breaking shock of 
 the strained fibers at the stump when the trees they were in 
 began to totter and groan. 
 
 Semicolon. The semicolon indicates a greater break in 
 construction than does the comma. It may therefore be 
 substituted sometimes for the comma and sometimes for 
 the period, but never indiscriminately. Remember that 
 the semicolon has well-defined uses of its own and should 
 not be regarded as a loose substitute for the comma or 
 period. It is preferred to the comma in the three follow- 
 ing uses: 
 
 Use I. The semicolon is used before the conjunctive 
 adverbs so, thus, then, therefore, etc., and before the ex- 
 planatory expressions that is, i.e., viz., namely, e.g., for 
 example, except when they introduce appositives; for ex- 
 ample: 
 
 The thunder clouds were rapidly gathering; so we made haste 
 to get our boat under cover. 
 
 Before I can answer your questions, I shall have to know 
 several facts; for example, I shall have to know whether your 
 friend has had any experience in this kind of work. 
 
 Use 2. The semicolon is used between the independent 
 clauses of a sentence not joined by one of the simple con- 
 junctions: 
 
 We must not rely on appearances; we must get at the facts in 
 the case. 
 
 Use 3. Even when the independent clauses of a com- 
 pound sentence are connected by a simple conjunction, the 
 semicolon should be used if either, or both, of the clauses is 
 long, or if either of them contains interior punctuation: 
 
22 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 Dorothea immediately took up the necklace and fastened it 
 around her sister's neck, where it fitted almost as closely as a 
 bracelet; but the circle suited the Henrietta-Maria style of 
 Celia's head and neck, and she could see that it did, in the pier- 
 glass opposite. 
 
 He was brave, but not reckless, in the presence of danger; self- 
 controlled, but not adamant, in the presence of human suffering; 
 and tender, but not maudlin, in the presence of death. 
 
 EXERCISE X 
 
 Punctuate the following sentences: 
 
 1. I didn't like school very much; [Use I] so I was late about 
 three times a week. 
 
 2. The people have made progress in many ways for example 
 they have better schools and churches. 
 
 3. You are standing on a sort of shelf down below you the river 
 flows silently along. 
 
 4. The corner cupboard was already old in service it had held 
 the medicine of generations. 
 
 5. First come the men with the axes they go ahead and cut 
 down the small trees. 
 
 6. It was ten o'clock when they mounted the steps it was about 
 midnight when I saw them coming back. 
 
 7. I could think of no good reason for going therefore I re- 
 mained at home. 
 
 8. We should not look on with idle hands we should do our part. 
 
 9. They had seen the French colors flying on Fort St. George 
 they had seen the chiefs of the English factory led in triumph 
 through the streets. 
 
 10. When manners have changed when the clergy the moral 
 leaders of the country have ceased to lead when the whole 
 order of society has undergone a complete revolution al- 
 though a bloodless and peaceful revolution we must see that 
 the time is ripe for reform. 
 
 Colon. The colon has only one important use: to point 
 
THE COMMA 23 
 
 forward to something which the reader naturally expects 
 to follow. For example: 
 
 There were three causes for his dismissal: laziness, lack of 
 capacity, and dishonesty. 
 
 After a pause, the speaker began as follows: " I have often looked 
 forward to the opportunity of addressing such an audience as 
 this." 
 
 EXERCISE XI 
 
 Punctuate the following sentences: 
 
 1 . As a student of philosophy he had read widely in the philos- 
 ophies of many men Plato Aristotle Hume Kant Hegel and 
 Nietzsche. 
 
 2. Lincoln had many qualities which made him easily accessible 
 to all men good-nature humor affability kindness and fair- 
 mindedness. 
 
 3 . The important thing is this that under such a government as 
 ours the broad path of opportunity is open equally to all men. 
 
 4. Friday has been a remarkable day in his life he was born on 
 Friday he entered college on Friday he married on Friday 
 and his election to the United States Senate took place on 
 Friday. 
 
 5. There were two steps in the process first he cut thin strips of 
 bark then he placed them in an oven for two days. 
 
 EXERCISE Xn 
 
 A General Exercise in Punctuation 
 
 Punctuate the following sentences, omitting all unneces- 
 sary punctuation: 
 
 1. The first thing you see is a log cabin if you look closely 
 you will see that it has been repaired many times. 
 
 2. I lived a happy life until one memorable day. When Mr. 
 Smith my father's partner came into the house to speak to 
 me. 
 
24 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 3. Men should not choose their professions before entering 
 college such a choice would be harmful to them. 
 
 4. He goes out early to kill birds. After he has killed all they 
 will need for dinner. He stops hunting and goes home in the 
 evening when his work has been finished he will take a good 
 book for an hour's reading. 
 
 5. They have opened up one big new plant. A flour mill 
 which turns out the best flour in the State. 
 
 6. They rushed wildly after the new lands some of them did 
 it for love of freedom others for love of property. 
 
 7. If business is carried on in this way it is a great benefit 
 otherwise it is a great loss to the nation. 
 
 8. Whitman believed in an individualistic democracy. A 
 democracy that gives every man the opportunity to ex- 
 press himself. 
 
 9. When they were ordered to enter the house they imagined 
 that the man was joking and being in a jovial humor they 
 laughed at the absurdity of the idea. 
 
 10. To conclude the whole business is a farce as I said before we 
 began it. 
 
 11. Thus idling and wandering stretching themselves now and 
 then among the grass and now getting up to look at some 
 specially fertile place which another called them to see and 
 which they thought might be turned to trading purposes 
 they came upon a mound covered with trees which looked 
 into a flat wide lawn of rank grass with a house at the end 
 of it. 
 
 12. As he was plowing the field his plow struck something 
 hard he picked it up and strange to say it was an old iron 
 chest. 
 
 13. Dress as neatly as you can but not too expensively in other 
 words let your dress be good but not extravagant. 
 
 14. And now the stupor of despair fell upon him he saw the 
 approach of the horse and rider but as in a dream. 
 
 15. They then gazed at the result of their work but with mingled 
 awe and pleasure. 
 
EXERCISE IN PUNCTUATION 25 
 
 16. In eight months he had done the work of two years and then 
 after a short rest he had completed the rest of the course. 
 
 17. For George Spencer professed a great admiration. 
 
 1 8. At length allowing his attention to wander from the road 
 he soon fell into a reverie from which he was awakened by 
 the sound of a cart rumbling over the bridge. 
 
 19. I had several reasons for refusing to go first I did not have 
 the time secondly I did not need the trip and thirdly I pre- 
 ferred to spend my vacation nearer home. 
 
 20. However as Annixter stepped from the porch of the ranch 
 house he was surprised to notice a gray haze over all the 
 sky the sunlight was gone there was a sense of coolness in 
 the air the weather-vane on the barn a fine golden trotting 
 horse with flamboyant mane and tail was veering in a south- 
 west wind. 
 
 21. The main of life is indeed composed of small incidents and 
 petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote and grief 
 for disappointments of no fatal consequence of insect vexa- 
 tions which sting us and fly away impertinences which buzz 
 awhile about us and are heard no more of meteorous pleas- 
 ures which dance before us and are dissipated of compli- 
 ments which glide off the soul like other music and are for- 
 gotten by him that gave and him that received them. 
 
 Such is the general heap out of which every man is to cull 
 his condition for as the chemists tell us all bodies are re- 
 solvable into the same elements and the boundless variety 
 of things arises from the different proportions of very few 
 ingredients so a few pains and a few pleasures are all the 
 materials of human life and of these the proportions are 
 partly allotted by Providence and partly left to the arrange- 
 ment of reason and of choice. 
 
 22. Miss Kinzer heres a lady wants to learn shrilled the high 
 nasal voice Miss Kinzer wheres Miss Kinzer oh here you are 
 as a young woman emerged from behind a pile of pasteboard 
 boxes Ive a learner for you Miss Kinzer shes a green girl but 
 she looks likely and I want you to give her a good chance 
 
26 SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION 
 
 better put her on table work to begin with and with that 
 injunction the little old maid hopped away ever worked in a 
 factory before she began no where did you work I never 
 worked any place before oh there was a world of meaning as 
 I afterward discovered in Miss Kinzers long drawn out oh 
 youre not used to work then she remarked insinuatingly 
 well not exactly that I replied nettled by her manner and 
 above all by her way of putting things I have worked before 
 but never at factory work then why didnt you say so where 
 do you live over in east fourteenth street I replied mechani- 
 cally forgetting for the moment the catastrophe that had 
 rendered me more homeless than ever home no I room my 
 folks are all dead what impression this bit of information 
 made I was unable to determine as I followed her slender 
 slightly bowed figure across the busy roaring workroom. 
 
 EXERCISE XIII 
 
 Copy a paragraph from some good book or magazine, 
 omitting all sentence divisions and marks of punctuation. 
 Put your copy aside for several days and then punctuate it. 
 Compare your copy with the original paragraph and ex- 
 plain any differences in sentence division and punctuation. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 I. Subordination. A sentence, we have seen, is a group 
 of words expressing a complete thought. A complete 
 thought may contain any number of constituent thoughts. 
 
 When a sentence contains only one thought, it is a simple 
 sentence; for example: 
 
 The man stands in the doorway. 
 
 We usually think, so to speak, in simple sentences, our 
 thoughts coming, not in bundles, but successively and 
 singly. The following might represent a train of thought: 
 
 The man stands in the doorway. He is tall. Perhaps the 
 doorway is low. His figure is shadowy. His clothes are dark. 
 The house is dark within. One cannot distinguish the man's 
 features. , 
 
 Obviously, that would be a hopelessly monotonous and 
 ineffective way of expressing oneself on paper, no matter 
 how accurately it represents our undirected thinking. The 
 first step that one naturally takes in endeavoring to avoid 
 this jerky, incoherent manner of writing is the binding to- 
 gether of closely related ideas, tying them in bundles. So 
 one writes: 
 
 The man is tall, or else the doorway is low. His clothes are 
 dark, and the house is dark within. Etc. 
 
 In each of these two sentences, we have united two ideas 
 by using a coordinating conjunction that expresses the rela- 
 tion of the constituent thoughts to each other, or ex- 
 
28 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 pressing alternation, and addition. The result in each case 
 is a compound sentence: it presents a complete thought 
 composed of two independent constituent thoughts. 
 
 Frequently, in telling a story, for instance, we ex- 
 press our thoughts in the form of compound sentences con- 
 taining a large number of constituent thoughts. Thus: 
 
 The street was bare, and not a soul was visible, and the horse 
 and buggy went crashing on, and then we saw a child just round 
 the curve. It seemed doomed, and we were frantic with horror, 
 but suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway, but we didn't 
 recognize him, and he blocked the way, and he turned out to be 
 our friend Martin. 
 
 Here are two compound sentences, one containing four, the 
 other six, constituent thoughts. Each is a correct sen- 
 tence, because the result in each case is one complete 
 thought first, the runaway horse was about to crush to 
 death a child, and second, the child was unexpectedly 
 saved by our friend Martin. But although these com- 
 pound sentences are correct, they are only a little less 
 monotonous and ineffective than that insufferable string 
 of brief simple sentences with which we began. 
 
 Why is this so? We have bound our thoughts in bun- 
 dles, so that they might be regarded as orderly groups, but 
 the result is still crude. What more can be done? 
 
 The difficulty is that our bundles are like piles of logs of 
 the same girth, neatly placed side by side and on top of 
 each other, and capable of the addition of as many more 
 of the same size as one cares to put on the pile. Adding a 
 few logs to our second pile, we get this result: 
 
 It stood there looking at a bright pebble, and it didn't move at ail, 
 and it seemed doomed, and we were filled with horror, and some of us 
 turned pale as death, but suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway, 
 and he had doubtless been there right along, but we hadn't noticed 
 
SUBORDINATION 29 
 
 him before, and he came out like a flash, and he blocked the way, and 
 it was Martin. (The principal clauses have been italicized.) 
 
 Now, we do not want piles of dead logs, but living trees. 
 Our sentences should not be built mechanically; they 
 should grow, as organisms grow. The tree might well be 
 taken as the symbol of a skillfully constructed sentence. 
 
 FIG. 6 
 
 FIG. $ 
 
 FIG. i 
 
 FIG. z 
 
 FIG. 3 FIG. 4 
 
 \ 
 
 FIGURE I. THE SIMPLE SENTENCE, RUDIMENTARY FORM 
 
 FIGURE 2. THE COMPOUND SENTENCE, RUDIMENTARY FORM 
 
 FIGURE 3. THE COMPLEX SENTENCE, RUDIMENTARY FORM 
 
 FIGURE 4. THE SIMPLE SENTENCE HIGHLY DEVELOPED 
 
 FIGURE 5. THE COMPOUND SENTENCE HIGHLY DEVELOPED 
 
 FIGURE 6. THE COMPLEX SENTENCE HIGHLY DEVELOPED 
 
 A sentence may contain, like the sentence above, many 
 constituent thoughts, but of these thoughts perhaps one 
 will stand out as the main thought (the trunk), which di- 
 vides into several subordinate thoughts (large branches), 
 which again divide into subordinate thoughts (small 
 branches), etc. Our sentence, if rewritten on this princi- 
 ple, might read as follows: 
 
 Standing there looking at a pebble, quite motionless, and ap- 
 parently doomed, the child filled us with such horror that some of 
 us turned pale as death; but suddenly we saw a man in a dark 
 doorway, whom we hadn't noticed before (though he had doubt- 
 less been there right along) and who, coming out like a flash, 
 
30 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 blocked the way it was Martin ! (The principal clauses have 
 been italicized.) 
 
 Here instead of eleven independent thoughts, we have 
 three: 
 
 (1) The child filled us with horror. 
 
 (2) Suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway. 
 
 (3) It was Martin. 
 
 All of the other thoughts are subordinate: 
 to (i): (a) Standing there looking at a 
 pebble. 
 
 (b) Quite motionless. 
 
 (c) Apparently doomed. 
 
 (d) Such that some of us turned 
 
 pale as death. 
 to (2): (a) Whom we hadn't noticed 
 
 before. FIGURE 7. REPRE- 
 
 (b) Though he had doubtless SENTS THE STRUC- 
 
 been there right along. TURE OF THE SEN- 
 
 (c) Coming out like a flash. TENCE ABOVE 
 
 (d) Who blocked the way. 
 to (3): None. 
 
 In general, the skillful writer is he who composes his 
 sentences so that they abound in subordination, in de- 
 pendent constituent thoughts, who in each group of 
 thoughts infallibly picks out the most important for ex- 
 pression in the main clause or clauses and puts the subor- 
 dinate thoughts in subordinate clauses and phrases. 
 
 How shall we find the important thoughts? This ques- 
 tion confronts even the most experienced writer. We 
 have, let us say, a thought to express that is composed of a 
 number of constituent thoughts; we are aware of the fact 
 that some are more important than others that is almost 
 bound to be the case; but how shall we find the chief among 
 
SUBORDINATION 31 
 
 them, the trunk? There are but two methods: first, we 
 may experiment, by writing our thoughts in various ways, 
 till we succeed in putting emphasis on the chief among 
 them (when the sentence perfectly expresses our thought 
 we may be quite certain that the emphasis is properly dis- 
 tributed); or, second, we may reflect, i.e., experiment men- 
 tally, reviewing the constituent parts of the whole thought 
 until we see them so clearly that the subordinate ideas fall 
 into the background and the most important idea or ideas 
 stand forth luminously. 
 
 How shall we express the subordinate thoughts? To 
 express the most important thoughts is fairly easy we 
 have but to keep them in the foreground of the mind as we 
 write the sentence, and they will find expression without 
 much concern on our part. To express the subordinate 
 thoughts, however, is not so easy. They are not so vivid 
 in our minds, they are remote and blurred, like the back- 
 ground of a landscape, and they demand skill in phras- 
 ing on account of the large number of relationships that 
 may exist between a subordinate clause and a principal 
 clause, time, condition, cause, purpose, result, conces- 
 sion, relativity, comparison, means, reference, consecu- 
 tiveness, correlation, adversity, relations that are to be 
 expressed by the appropriate connective or by the use of a 
 special construction. If, for example, the relation be 
 condition, we might combine these two thoughts 
 
 It rains 
 
 I will not go 
 
 either by the use of a connective: 
 
 If it rains, I will not go; 
 or by the use of a special construction: 
 
 Should it rain, I would not go. 
 
32 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 Fortunately, the English language is rich in connectives 
 that express the various logical relationships. When there 
 are a half dozen connectives for us to choose among, we 
 ought to be able to recall one immediately, and to recall 
 the most suitable one after a little reflection. Most people 
 have only a handful of connectives at their command, but 
 their poverty is not due to that of the English language. 
 Following is a table that includes some of the most useful 
 connectives: 
 
 CONDITION 
 
 if 
 
 in case that 
 
 provided that 
 TIME 
 
 when 
 
 before 
 
 after 
 
 while 
 
 since 
 
 till 
 
 until 
 
 prior to 
 
 as 
 
 whenever 
 
 as often as 
 
 as soon as 
 
 now that 
 PLACE 
 
 where 
 
 wherever 
 
 whenever 
 
 whither 
 CONCESSION 
 
 though 
 
 although 
 
SUBORDINATION 
 
 33 
 
 CAUSE 
 
 PURPOSE 
 
 even if 
 
 in spite of 
 
 notwithstanding 
 
 since 
 as 
 
 because 
 inasmuch as 
 in that 
 
 that 
 
 so that 
 
 in order that 
 
 for the purpose of 
 
 with a view to 
 
 RESULT 
 
 COMPARISON 
 
 MANNER 
 
 so that 
 so 
 
 such. . 
 
 .that 
 . .that 
 
 as. 
 so. 
 
 , as 
 ,as 
 
 as 
 as if 
 
 EXERCISE XIV 
 
 A. Subordinate either statement to the other; 
 
 1. I saw her. 
 
 I waved my handkerchief. 
 
 2. I completed the task. 
 I went to bed. 
 
 3. I worked most of the night. 
 I was sleepy the next day. 
 
 4. Germany is mastering Russia. 
 The Allies will win the war. 
 
34 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 5. Woodrow Wilson is a Virginian. 
 
 He is clearly one of our greatest Presidents. 
 
 6. Everybody knows that Becky Sharp is a character in Vanity 
 Fair. 
 
 This novel was written by Thackeray. 
 
 7. I have never seen a famous oil painting. 
 I live in a remote part of the mountains. 
 
 B. Write a list of the phrases and clauses in " Freshmen 
 and Life" (see pages 83-85) that indicate (i) Condition, 
 (2) Time, (3) Place, (4 ) Concession, (5) Cause, (6) Purpose, 
 (7) Result, (8) Comparison, (9) Manner. 
 
 C. Rewrite each of the following sentences in the form of 
 a single sentence, substituting, so far as possible, subordi- 
 nate constructions for coordinate constructions: 
 
 1. He was an inventor and as such he proved very successful. 
 
 2. It was a pretty place, and so we thought we would camp there. 
 
 3. Holt is more energetic as well as abler than the other men, 
 and he may be counted on to succeed. 
 
 4. We walked about three miles east, and there we found we 
 had come to the end of the path a steep hill rose up in 
 front of us. 
 
 5. Some think that the man who reads the most books and 
 remembers the most facts is the best educated man, but this 
 is true only for the ones who intend to teach; they alone are 
 educated in their kind of work. 
 
 6. The coal is brought in wagons, and it is afterwards shoveled 
 into baskets, and it is then carried into the cellar. 
 
 7. We can save a great deal by abiding by the laws of the Food 
 Administration, and let us make a real effort to use only the 
 necessary articles of food. 
 
 8. I came to college with no idea of what I should do, but since 
 I entered, I have decided to practice law, and next year I 
 shall go to a law school and shall prepare myself for my 
 profession. 
 
SUBORDINATION 35 
 
 9. This town got its name from Captain John Smith and is 
 more than one hundred years old, but the inhabitants num- 
 ber only about eighteen hundred. 
 10. It had rained all the morning and it was raining harder that 
 
 afternoon, 8#*d we decided not to go on the camping trip. 
 t.y'li. Some of the buildings are very old, with bars on the window, 
 and the iron doors are very strong. 
 
 12. The next year I attended school at Jameson and was very 
 successful in all my work but Latin, and I dropped it. 
 
 13. Statestown has a great many stores, and all of them do good 
 business. 
 
 14. After I entered college, it was two days before classes started; 
 so I didn't know how to pass the time, but it did not take 
 me long to get acquainted with the boys, and after the first 
 few days I began to enjoy my college life. 
 
 15. Our town has a good government and it hardly needs the 
 jail, but there is a small one. 
 
 16. We were riding along laughing and talking, and all at once 
 a tire blew out, but we had all the tools with us and it did not 
 take us long to repair it. 
 
 17. He was quite different from his companions, and it turned 
 out that he was a nobleman, but he had suffered a great 
 misfortune and had been driven into the army. 
 
 1 8. In the schools of France the ideal of writing well is constantly 
 held before the pupil, and this is the case in both the lower 
 and the higher classes, and so the pupil takes pride in writing 
 well, but in America we have no such tradition, and this is 
 one reason why the American college freshman writes badly. 
 
 19. He walked about an hour and then reached Blueville; this 
 is a little village eight miles from Cordon. 
 
 20. She became uneasy, and was afraid that something had be- 
 fallen him, and she wanted to go in search, but had been told 
 never to go further than that sign, and so she had to wait. 
 
 D. Combine each of the following groups of statements 
 into one compact sentence. 
 
36 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 1. Braddock feared a surprise attack. He left his main force 
 behind. They were to guard the camp. 
 
 2. John Milton was an English poet. He was born in London. 
 He was born in 1608. His first teacher was the Puritan 
 Thomas Young. 
 
 3. The house stood on a hill. It was a high hill. The hill was 
 covered with trees. The trees were oaks. They were very 
 old and beautiful trees. The house was always shaded. 
 
 * 4. I went to a play last night. The play was Ccesar and Cleo- 
 patra. It was written by Shaw. The play was very inter- 
 esting. The characters were good. The speeches were 
 witty. I spent a most enjoyable evening. 
 
 i 5. Pope was of a tender constitution. He was of a delicate con- 
 stitution. He was so from birth. But he is said to have 
 shown two characteristics. One was a remarkable gentle- 
 ness of disposition. Another was a remarkable sweetness 
 of disposition. 
 
 ' 6. The house was totally dark. It was like its neighbors. He 
 tapped a few times. He heard a movement overhead. A 
 door was opened. A voice asked who was there. It was a 
 cautious voice. A woman was speaking. She was speaking 
 to him. 
 
 E. Rewrite the following paragraphs, changing to sub- 
 ordinate clauses as many as possible of the principal clauses 
 (according to the probable logical relationships), and using 
 connectives freely: 
 
 We were certain that the sun, when it rose, would show us how 
 to proceed, but we were destined to be disappointed; a thick gray 
 screen of clouds made it impossible to tell where the sun was. 
 We had given up all hope of making sure of the points of the com- 
 pass, and we debated: should we take the road to the left of the 
 cabin, or should we take the one to the right? I wanted to bring 
 the debate to an end; so I pulled out a coin and called eagerly, 
 "Heads left, tails right!" I had my enthusiasm all to myself. 
 The debate. w.enL on- Arguments were adduced^ but they were. 
 
PARALLELISM 37 
 
 always promptly refuted. We had grown hoarse at length, and 
 the sun suddenly disclosed itself through the pines on the hill. 
 (Student's Theme.) 
 
 The remainder of that night I paced to and fro on the smooth 
 highway, and I reflected on the future and the past. My thoughts 
 at first dwelled tenderly on those who were just gone, and then 
 took a more manly temper as I considered what remained for me 
 to do. Day came upon the inland mountain-tops, and the fowls 
 began to cry and the smoke of homesteads to arise in the brown 
 bosom of the moors, and then I turned my face homeward and 
 went down the path to where the roof of Durrisdeer shone in the 
 morning by the sea. (Adapted from the chapter entitled "The 
 Enemy in the House," - some eight pages from the end, in 
 Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae; the exercise, when completed, 
 might well be compared with the original passage.) 
 
 And then they put their spears in the rests, and came together 
 with their horses as fast as they might run, and either smote 
 others in middes of (in the middle of) their shields, that both 
 their horses' backs brast (broke) under them, and the knights 
 were both stonied (stunned), and as soon as they might avoid 
 their horses, they took their shields afore them, and drew out 
 their swords, and came together eagerly, and either gave other 
 many strong strokes, for there might neither shields nor harness 
 hold their strokes. (From Malory's Morte D 'Arthur, bk. vi, ch. 
 vin ; everything archaic in the passage should be modernized.) 
 
 F. Narrate a simple incident that can be dealt with ade- 
 quately in a page or two, and then rewrite it, changing to 
 subordinate clauses as many as possible of the principal 
 clauses. 
 
 G. Write a paragraph of 100 to 200 words, and then re- 
 write it, using no ands or buts between clauses, and not al- 
 lowing the average length of the sentences to run below 
 fifteen words. 
 
 2. Parallelism. Let us follow out our principle that 
 the structure of the sentence depends on the nature of the 
 
38 SENTENCES AND THINKING " 
 
 thought to be expressed, and observe how it applies to one 
 or two important matters of sentence construction. We 
 have seen that when any parts of our sentence-thought are 
 different in rank, when some are chief and others are 
 subordinate, we must, in order to be strictly truthful, 
 express this logical difference through a structural differ- 
 ence. It naturally follows that when any parts of our sen- 
 tence-thought are of the same rank, are logically coordi- 
 nate, we must express this logical sameness through a 
 structural sameness. For example, let us suppose that we 
 desire to express a complete thought composed of two parts 
 logically coordinate. We shall then write a compound 
 sentence containing two clauses: 
 
 The postmaster-general is Mr. Burleson, and the attorney- 
 general is Mr. Palmer. 
 
 If our thought has three parts, we shall write: 
 I came, I saw, I conquered. 
 
 In these cases, subordination would positively distort the 
 thought; it would not be quite the truth to say: 
 
 Having come, I saw, I conquered. 
 
 The postmaster-general is Mr. Burleson, the attorney-general 
 being Mr. Palmer. 
 
 If we now suppose that we desire to express a complete 
 thought composed of three constituent thoughts, one main 
 thought and two subordinate thoughts, we shall of course 
 put the main thought into the principal clause, and the 
 subordinate thoughts into parallel subordinate clauses: 
 
 If the rain stops, and if the roads are good enough, we shall 
 drive on to Bridgton in the morning. 
 
 The first two thoughts have been expressed in the form of 
 conditional clauses introduced by if, because they are re- 
 
PARALLELISM 39 
 
 lated to the third and main thought in precisely the same 
 way: our driving on to Bridgton is dependent on two con- 
 tingencies. Since the subordinate ideas are parallel, they 
 are put into parallel constructions. It would not do to say: 
 
 Should the rain stop, and if the roads are good enough, we shall 
 drive on to Bridgton in the morning. 
 
 Should is a verb, while if is a conjunction. There could be 
 no parallelism until we changed our verb and conjunction 
 to either two verbs or two conjunctions. 
 
 Two practical suggestions, if borne in mind, will help in 
 the detection and correction of faulty parallelism. First, 
 remember that the sign of parallelism is grammatical we 
 should have two (or more) participles, two infinitives, two 
 pronouns, two prepositions, etc. If the principle of paral- 
 lelism gives us trouble, we may be reasonably certain that 
 the cause of the trouble is our shabby acquaintance with 
 grammatical forms. In this event, the obvious remedy is 
 to go back to our grammar and to study carefully, among 
 other things, the parts of speech. Before we can master 
 the parallel construction, we must be able to state the part 
 of speech of every word in any sentence. 
 
 Secondly, fix your attention on the first word or phrase. 
 This is always made the sign of parallelism. Provided that 
 we have two clauses introduced by if or two clauses intro- 
 duced by should, we may be sure that they are parallel even 
 if the latter parts of the clauses differ. For example, in the 
 sentence already given 
 
 If the rain stops, and if the roads are good enough, we shall 
 drive on to Bridgton in the morning. 
 
 the phrase good enough follows the are of the second 
 clause, whereas the verb stops of the first clause stands 
 alone; and yet the two clauses are regarded as parallel in 
 
40 SENTENCES AND THINKING ^ 
 
 construction, just as two lines may be parallel without 
 being of the same length. In many cases of parallelism, 
 the similarity in grammatical forms affects only the first 
 word or two, as in this sentence: 
 
 He said that it ought not to be done, and that he, for his part, 
 had no interest in it. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the two constructions are parallel 
 throughout, as in this sentence from an essay of Arnold's: 
 
 To know Italian belles lettres is not to know Italy, and to know 
 English belles lettres is not to know England. 
 
 Here the two members, being equivalent, form a balanced 
 as well as a parallel construction. The principle of balance 
 is simply an extension or intensification of the principle of 
 parallelism. Neither parallelism nor balance is restricted 
 to a single sentence; either, indeed, may affect any number 
 of successive sentences. Here is a familiar illustration 
 from Julius Cezsar: 
 
 Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; 
 for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be 
 a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here 
 so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have 
 I offended. 
 
 One of the most useful types of balanced construction 
 is that in which the balance rests on correlative conjunc- 
 tions (see pp. 14-15). For example: 
 
 Sincerity is of the utmost importance, not only in the choice of 
 subject, but also in the execution of every detail. 
 
 Both the choice of subject and the execution of every detail 
 should be entirely sincere. 
 
 Note that the grammatical forms that follow the correla- 
 tives in these sentences are the same: " not only in . . . but 
 also in"', "Both the choice . . . and the execution" 
 
PARALLELISM 41 
 
 EXERCISE XV 
 
 A. PoinLout the parallel constructions in the following 
 sentences and passages, stating in each case whether the 
 constructions begin with infinitives, or participles, or 
 gerund phrases, or conjunctions, etc. 
 
 1. (a) Shouting at the top of his voice, and (b) gesticulat- 
 ing frantically, he made us stare at him in amazement. 
 (Participles) 
 
 2. The accident occurred because the streets were slippery and 
 because the driver was reckless. ~~~T 
 
 3. He wore a soft hat, a military cape, and mud-bespattered 
 boots. 
 
 4. He told us to walk a mile west, to turn north by the Bucks- 
 town turnpike, and to proceed as far as the railroad bridge. 
 
 5. Since he refuses to come, and since there is no one to force 
 him to come, I suppose we shall have to get along without 
 him. 
 
 6. I met him three times, at the club, on the street, and on 
 the ferry, but he refused to look at me. 
 
 7. While the recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, 
 while the power of the Catholic party still inspired appre- 
 hension, while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired to 
 universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they 
 had a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. 
 (Macaulay) 
 
 8. It has been sworn on the tomb of Washington. It has been 
 sworn on the tomb of our allied soldiers, fallen in a sacred 
 cause. It has been sworn by the bedside of our wounded 
 men. It has been sworn on the heads of our orphan children. 
 It has been sworn on cradles and on tombs. It has been 
 sworn! (Fii'iani) 
 
 9. It is for you now to take your part in the great process of 
 reconciling liberty and discipline. Liberty alone scatters in 
 the air its power; discipline alone is a matter for slaves, dull, 
 
42 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 sodden slaves. But the highest attainment of the people 
 of a free country, the highest attainment of civilization, is 
 the reconciliation of liberty and discipline; discipline con- 
 scious of freedom, and liberty capable of discipline. (Root) 
 10. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and 
 some few to be chewed and digested that is, some books 
 are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not 
 curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with dili- 
 gence and attention. . . . Reading maketh a full man, 
 conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And 
 therefore, if a man write little he had need have a great 
 memory; if he confer little he had need have a present wit; 
 and if he read little he had need have much cunning, to seem 
 to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, 
 witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; 
 moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. (Bacon) 
 
 B. Consider the value of parallelism in Lincoln's famous 
 letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. 
 
 C. Using the following matter, write sentences contain- 
 ing as many varieties of parallelism or balance as possible: 
 
 1. The several reasons why you came to college. 
 
 2. A contrast between your college and another college. 
 
 3. Reasons why a Freshman is superior to a Sophomore. 
 
 4. A summary of the mode of instruction in theme writing in 
 your high school. 
 
 5. The chief distinctions of your town or county. 
 
 *6. A summary account of how you spend your evenings. 
 
 7. The value of the study of Latin, or Spanish, or German. 
 
 8. Several underlying causes of the World War. 
 
 9. Why America is indebted to France. 
 
 10. A contrast between autocracy and democracy. 
 
 D. Write a one-sentence summary (about as long as the 
 model below), in parallel construction, of two of the follow- 
 ing poems and short stories: 
 
PARALLELISM 43 
 
 Poems: " Sir Patrick Spens," " Chevy Chase," " Lord Lovel." 
 Milton's "Comus." Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." Tenny- 
 son's "Locksley Hall." Browning's "Incident of the French 
 Camp," "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
 Aix," "Herve Kiel." Noyes's "Highwayman." 
 
 Stories: Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Poe's "Cask of 
 Amontillado," "A Descent into the Maelstrom," "Masque of the 
 Red Death." Hawthorne's "Great Stone Face," "Birthmark." 
 Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring Camp." Kale's "Man Without 
 a Country." Miss Jewett's "Fame's Little Day." O. Henry's 
 "Phoebe," "Gift of the Magi," "A Municipal Report." Hardy's 
 "Three Strangers." Maupassant's "Necklace," "Piece of String." 
 Bjornson's" Father." 
 
 "As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods" is a poem by 
 Whitman telling how, as he roamed through the autumn woods 
 of Virginia, he noticed at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; 
 how he imagined the circumstances of the burial the death of 
 the wounded soldier during the retreat, the halt at midday, the 
 quick preparation of a grave, the nailing of a tablet on the 
 tree bearing these scrawled words, Bold, cautious, true, and my 
 loving comrade; and how, in the years that followed, the image 
 flashed before him abruptly, when alone or in the street, of that 
 unknown soldier's grave in the woods of Virginia, with its rude 
 inscription, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. 
 
 E. Write a one-sentence description, in parallel construc- 
 tion, of any two of the following pictures (obtainable, if 
 need be, in the University Prints, the Perry Pictures, and 
 similar series): 
 
 Willard, "The Spirit of '76." Leutze, "Washington Crossing 
 the Delaware." Boughton, "Pilgrims Going to Church." Mil- 
 lais, "The Boyhood of Raleigh." Thompson, "Charge of the 
 Scotch Grays at Waterloo." Turner, "The Fighting Temeraire." 
 Millet, "The Man with the Hoe," "The Gleaners," "The Ange- 
 lus," "The Sower." Bonheur, "The Horse Fair," "Ploughing." 
 Poynter, "Atalanta's Race." Raphael, "The Sistine Madonna." 
 
44 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 Holman Hunt, "The Light of the World," "Finding of Christ 
 in the Temple." Leonardo da Vinci, "The Last Supper." 
 
 "Fog Warning" is a painting by Winslow Homer showing. 
 in the foreground, a fisherman in a dory riding a great wave; 
 behind him, to the right, a sailing ship perhaps a mile away; 
 and, beyond the ship and along the horizon, a dark, streaming 
 cloud that warns the fisherman, as he looks over his shoulder, 
 of the perils of isolation in the fog. 
 
 F. Detect and correct faulty parallelisms in these 
 sentences : 
 
 1. The crowd began singing and to beat time to the music. 
 
 2. He said that the peasants are lazy, uneducated, and that 
 they are intensely conservative. 
 
 3. I believe neither in his wisdom nor do I trust in his honesty. 
 
 4. I knew my friends had arrived and that they were safe. 
 
 5. He sees that the laws are carried out and the machinery of 
 the government working well. 
 
 6. Not only does he learn how to make impromptu speeches, 
 but also learns a better use of the English language. 
 
 7. The first reason was that he stood for what the people 
 wanted, and the second -was Wratree he was the representa- 
 tive of the strongest party. 
 
 8. It is a democracy because the individualistic spirit is present 
 and the people having control of the government. 
 
 9. They soon became stronger in character and in wisdom, and 
 also in prosperity. 
 
 10. Independence inspired the people with a new courage, a new 
 hope, and a determination that was also new. 
 
 11. At that time I had the hope of becoming a doctor and prob- 
 ably specialize in some branch of medicine. 
 
 12. Patience is no longer a virtue, further endurance is coward- 
 ice, it would be slavery to submit to Prussian demands. 
 
 13. He was of medium stature, of a ruddy complexion, and 
 weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. 
 
EMPHASIS 45 
 
 14. Some of these books are required, others are recommended, 
 and there are others that are only suggested. 
 
 15. The house, old and dust-covered, and which had not been 
 occupied for many years, at last had an occupant. 
 
 3. Emphasis. Telling the truth we have found to be a 
 very difficult task; nor have we yet come to the end of the 
 matter. If we have learned to give the shades of our 
 thought with approximate exactness by subordinating all 
 subordinate matter, coordinating all coordinate matter, 
 and making parallel all parallel matter, we have indeed 
 been apt apprentices in the art of telling the truth; but 
 mastery requires of us that we tell, not only the truth, but 
 the whole truth. Absolute mastery we can scarcely hope 
 to attain that is reserved for the Homers, and Dantes, 
 and Shaksperes, the great truth-tellers, who give us, if not 
 all the truth, all the truth as they saw it. So far we lesser 
 men cannot hope to go; but we should go as far as we can. 
 
 One obvious thing remains to be done. I may subor- 
 dinate and coordinate faithfully without approximating 
 the truth, simply because I have ignored relative values 
 among my thoughts. The public speaker who gives two- 
 thirds of his time to introductory remarks, and only one- 
 third to his speech proper, is very far from telling the truth 
 The writer whose paragraph is top-heavy, who brings his 
 paragraph to a conclusion suddenly because it is becoming 
 alarmingly long, is not writing a truthful paragraph. The 
 writer whose sentence does not mirror the symmetry of his 
 thought (assuming that it has symmetry), whose sentence 
 does not throw into relief what is important and leave in 
 the background what is relatively unimportant, has not 
 yet learned to write even an approximately truthful sen- 
 tence. There are several ways of giving thoughts con- 
 spicuousness or emphasis. 
 
46 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 Italics. School-girls writing letters, in which they are 
 pleased to regard nearly everything as all-important, un- 
 derline abundantly. In print, italics are equivalent to 
 underlining. They are used sparingly by skillful writers, 
 the volcanic Carlyle being a notable exception. In the 
 following passage, for example, Carlyle has used italics for 
 several words (including even part of a word) and capital 
 letters for other words : 
 
 He is a Columbus minded to sail to the indistinct country of 
 NOWHERE, to the indistinct country of WHITHERWARD, 
 by the friendship of those same waste-tumbling Water-Alps and 
 howling waltz of All the Winds; not by conquest of them and in 
 spite of them, but by friendship of them, when once they have 
 made up their mind! He is the most original Columbus I ever 
 saw. Nay, his problem is not an impossible one: he will infalli- 
 bly arrive at that same country of NOWHERE; his indistinct 
 Whitherward will be a Thitherwardl In the Ocean Abysses and 
 Locker of Davy Jones, there certainly enough do he and his 
 ship's company, and all their cargo and navigations, at last find 
 lodgement. 
 
 Carlyle, it should be remembered, had a better right than 
 we to use these mechanical devices frequently, because 
 he used them in addition to, not in place of, superior means 
 of securing emphasis. What are these superior means? 
 
 Improvement of the Words. One of the best means, yet 
 one of the least used by the student, is aa improvement of 
 the words. Words may be improved in several ways, 
 (i) They may be made stronger, more intense, in meaning. 
 If I write, "I shall be glad to come," and feel that I have 
 not conveyed enough gladness, I may, indeed, simply ital- 
 icize the important word "I shall be glad to come." 
 But I could express my pleasure more effectively by casting 
 about for a stronger word than glad possibly delighted. 
 
EMPHASIS 47 
 
 (2) They may be made more fresh. How quickly a word or 
 phrase loses its effectiveness through repetition! " Weird," 
 " busy as a bee," " along this line/' " potent factor," and 
 hundreds of other expressions have been used so often that 
 they meet the ear dully. Slang is objectionable, among 
 other reasons, because it is hackneyed. Journalistic ex- 
 pressions are objectionable for the same reason. So are 
 colloquialisms. Whatever the character of the worn-out 
 expression, the remedy consists in replacing it with one that 
 is chosen, not because it comes to mind readily, but be- 
 cause it fits the context; if we will but resolutely endeavor 
 to say what is in our minds our words will be fresh and vital 
 and not trite and lifeless. We do not mean "feathered 
 songsters": we mean birds, or possibly wood thrushes. 
 " He spoke with pep " is not only vulgar, but also stupidly 
 vague: we mean, perhaps, that he spoke with passion 
 or he spoke with energy, or with enthusiasm, or anima- 
 tion, or excitement, or bitterness, or elation, or what not. 
 A word that really fits is always fresh. (3) They may be 
 made more specific. We do most of our thinking in speci- 
 fic, not general, terms; even when class names are given, 
 we often transform them mentally into individual mem- 
 bers of the class. We are always eager to visualize and 
 general terms convey only the vaguest of images. There- 
 fore the statement "He went across the room " is much less 
 emphatic than "He strode across the room" (or "hob- 
 bled," "ambled," "picked his way"); "He came soon 
 after" than "He came in five minutes"; "It was a good 
 sermon" than "It was a stirring sermon"; "The clouds 
 were colored with a very pretty tint " than " The clouds 
 were tinted salmon-pink." Though, of course, general 
 terms have their place, the novice will do well to follow 
 this rule: Always aim to write concretely. 
 
48 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 Climax. Assuming that the words chosen to express our 
 thoughts are strong enough to bear our meaning, we have 
 next to consider the emphatic ordering of them. When our 
 thoughts are parallel but different in value in intensity, 
 in importance, in definiteness, in interest we should in- 
 dicate the gradations by the use of a climactic arrangement, 
 an ascending series. The English word "climax" comes 
 from a Greek word meaning "a ladder." In a ladder the 
 rungs are, of course, placed one above the other, so that the 
 climber progresses toward his object; similarly, in a sen- 
 tence involving parallel members of differing values, the 
 parallel members should be so placed that there is progress 
 from those of lesser value to those of greater. "Your son 
 is very ill seriously ill desperately ill" has emphasis 
 because the order is climactic. We should have an anti- 
 climax if we wrote, instead, "Your son is desperately ill 
 seriously ill very ill." This would violate the rising in- 
 tensity of the thoughts we are representing in language. 
 Again, "The wind had ceased, the color faded out of the 
 western sky, and a dozen whippoorwills began calling vocif- 
 erously, till our ears throbbed with the sound," has em- 
 phasis through climax. In this case, instead of a rising 
 intensity, we have an increase in both definiteness and in- 
 terest. To have produced our whippoorwill concert first 
 and then gone back to the bare fact of the wind's ceasing 
 would have been to obliterate one thought through the 
 splendor of another. As Herbert Spencer remarks, you 
 cannot see the light of a fire after looking at the sun, but if 
 you look at the fire first you can see both. 
 
 Departure from the Normal Word Order. Any deviation 
 from the norm, whether in manners or in rhetoric, attracts 
 attention. Any one who has learned to read has become so 
 
EMPHASIS 49 
 
 accustomed to a certain word order subject, verb, and 
 complement that he notices, or feels unconsciously, 
 every clear case of departure from this standard. For this 
 reason these sentences 
 
 I picked him out from all the rest. 
 
 We lesser men cannot go so far. 
 
 I will crush to pieces whoever opposes me. 
 
 are less emphatic than these: 
 
 Him I picked out from all the rest. 
 
 So far we lesser men cannot go. 
 
 Who opposes me I will crush to pieces! 
 
 In practice, this principle means: If your sentence does not 
 throw into relief your main thoughts, transpose some of 
 the words and phrases experimentally until it does. ' 
 
 Placing Important Matter at the End of the Sentence. An 
 excellent means of securing emphasis one that can be 
 resorted to in nearly every sentence, and that can be ap- 
 plied with ease consists in placing important matter at 
 the end of the sentence. The beginning of the sentence is 
 also a conspicuous place, but since the end is much more 
 conspicuous and since most writers cannot consciously at- 
 tend to both, we shall find it advisable to concentrate our 
 attention on the end. It is not hard to explain why the 
 end is emphatic: upon reaching the period, the reader 
 stops for a moment to reflect, to get his mental wind, be- 
 fore entering upon the next thought, and while he is paus- 
 ing he notices most vividly what is nearest him the last 
 words of the sentence. In most sentences there are what 
 we might term "pivotal words," on which the meaning of 
 the sentence rests. In the sentence, "I think, however, 
 that his attitude is wrong," the pivotal words, the impor- 
 tant words, are obviously attitude and wrong, the latter be- 
 
50 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 ing the most important word in the entire sentence. The 
 sentence has emphasis. But place another word at the 
 end, and observe how the sentence loses its ring: 
 
 I think that his attitude is wrong, however. 
 However, his attitude is wrong, I think. 
 
 The difference in arrangement is slight; the difference in 
 effect is highly important. Again, when President Wilson 
 wrote: 
 
 A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except 
 by a partnership of democratic nations. 
 
 he rightly placed at the end the pivotal words, demo- 
 cratic nations. Tuck away these words in the interior of 
 the sentence, and you spoil the effect: 
 
 A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except 
 by the democratic nations in partnership. 
 
 which implies that partnership is the pivotal word. 
 
 When we have acquired the habit of reserving our im- 
 portant words for the close of the sentence, we are ready 
 to extend this practice to the rest of the sentence. If the 
 reader's mind pauses at the end of a sentence, it is also true 
 that it pauses, more briefly, wherever there is punctuation 
 within the sentence. Generally speaking, the punctuation 
 marks off what we have called constituent thoughts. A 
 sentence in which the logical divisions are not thus indi- 
 cated is ordinarily not so easy to understand as a sen- 
 tence in which the divisions are indicated by punctuation. 
 The following sentence from Theodore Roosevelt's " Char- 
 ter of Democracy" speech is an example: 
 
 Let us remember, also, that Conservation does not stop with 
 the natural resources, but that the principle of making the best 
 
EMPHASIS 51 
 
 use of all we have requires with equal or greater insistence that 
 we shall stop the waste of human life in industry and prevent the 
 waste of human welfare which flows from the unfair use of con- 
 centrated power and wealth in the hands of men whose eagerness 
 for profits blinds them to the cost of what they do. 
 
 Here and there such a sentence, if emphatically phrased, 
 is effective; ordinarily, however, it lacks emphasis because 
 no words in it, save the last, are stressed, and the total 
 result is more or less of a blur. Not content, then, with 
 placing the pivotal words just before the period, we should 
 make some effort to place other important words just be- 
 fore the commas and semicolons, as Roosevelt does in this 
 sentence: 
 
 We stand for applying the Constitution to the issues of to-day 
 as Lincoln applied it to the issues of his day; Lincoln mind you, 
 and not Buchanan, was the real upholder and preserver of the 
 Constitution, for the true progressive, the progressive of the Lin- 
 coln stamp, is the only true constitutionalist, the only real 
 conservative. 
 
 Suspense. Still another principle, suspense, serves the 
 end of emphasis. The close of the sentence, we have 
 found, is the most emphatic part of it; we can add still 
 more to the emphasis at the close if we suspend the thought, 
 keep the secret of the sentence, until we reach the last 
 word. Examine the following sentences: 
 
 The impulse of the English race toward moral development 
 and self-conquest has manifested itself in Puritanism, and more 
 powerfully than anywhere else. 
 
 The impulse of the English race toward moral development 
 and self-conquest has nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as 
 in Puritanism. 
 
 The second sentence is stronger, not only because the piv- 
 
52 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 otal word Puritanism is placed at the end, but also because 
 our sense of grammatical completeness is not satisfied until 
 we reach the concluding word. The meaning is suspended 
 the reader retains the thought expectantly illumina- 
 tion comes suddenly and brilliantly with the word Puritan- 
 ism. A sentence in which grammatical completeness is 
 thus reserved to the end is termed a periodic sentence; a 
 sentence in which the thought is completed piecemeal is 
 termed a loose sentence. In nearly all good writing, the 
 loose sentence predominates; but no modern style is likely 
 to be effective in which periodic sentences, or virtually 
 periodic sentences, do not abound. Since a loose sentence 
 may be composed as the writer proceeds, without much 
 concern for what is coming, it is only too good a medium 
 for the expression of flaccid thought firm when com- 
 posed by a skillful writer, it often sprawls at the touch of a 
 slovenly writer. Though a style that is constantly periodic 
 makes tiresome reading, a writer who is still serving his ap- 
 prenticeship would not go far astray if he tried to employ 
 the principle of suspense whenever an opportunity pre- 
 sented itself. When the meaning is suspended to the last 
 words of the sentence, the writer is obliged to see his goal, 
 however dimly, before he begins to write his sentence. 
 That makes for well-knit sentences. A practical hint to 
 utilize when one is trying to cast a sentence in a periodic 
 mould is this: reserve the subject of the sentence for a posi- 
 tion as near the end as possible, or, what often amounts to 
 the same thing, put the subordinate clauses and phrases 
 first and the principal clause last. 
 
 EXERCISE XVI 
 
 A. Underline the pivotal words in the following sen- 
 tences: 
 
EMPHASIS 53 
 
 1. I have not read history without observing that the greatest 
 forces in the world and the only permanent forces are the 
 moral forces. 
 
 2. The French Revolution inaugurated a new movement not 
 only for France, but for the whole world. 
 
 3. The teachers of morality discourse like angels, but they live 
 like men. 
 
 4. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting 
 his scent with the flowers of the spring; no man can at the 
 same time fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of 
 the Nile. 
 
 5. The beginning and the end of what is the matter with us in 
 these days is that we have forgotten God. 
 
 6. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal. 
 
 7. But the final value of action, like that of books, and better 
 than books, is that it is a resource. 
 
 8. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide 
 for human wants. 
 
 B. Of the following sentences, determine which are 
 periodic, which are virtually periodic, and which are loose: 
 
 1. He has, we are glad to say, avoided both these extremes. 
 
 2. I came here to meet my friend, who was to return as soon 
 as he had finished his business. 
 
 3. Although his reading was without plan, he learned much. 
 
 4. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
 
 5. I often saw the General, taking the liberty to call on him 
 frequently. 
 
 6. He found the task so disagreeable that he soon gave up in 
 disgust. 
 
 7. Finding it impossible to refuse, he consented, though with 
 great reluctance. 
 
 8. Without further delay, he sprang from behind the garden 
 wall silently. 
 
 9. With a trace of hysteria both began to laugh. 
 
54 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 10. What men allow themselves to wish, they will soon believe, 
 and will be at last incited to execute what they please them- 
 selves with contriving. 
 
 11. This doubt troubled him, this terror, this fear. 
 
 12. From morning to night steadily had he worked. 
 
 13. Whatever the author might tell either his readers or himself, 
 I am not convinced that the design was moral. 
 
 14. Columbus, who sailed across an ocean that was unknown to 
 others, and who, though entreated by his sailors to discon- 
 tinue the voyage, persevered until his end was gained, was 
 a type of the persistent man. 
 
 15. Lincoln, who did not have the advantages of many people, 
 but who made use of every possible opportunity to become 
 educated, was a persistent worker also. 
 
 1 6. The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is 
 regarded not solely as the endeavor to see things as they are, 
 to draw towards a knowledge of the universal order which 
 seems to be intended and aimed at in the world, and which 
 it is a man's happiness to go along with or his misery to 
 go counter to, to learn, in short, the will of God, the 
 moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as the 
 endeavor to see and learn this, but as the endeavor also to 
 make it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent character 
 of culture becomes manifest. (Arnold.) 
 
 17. And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering 
 into active life, going into society, traveling, gaining ac- 
 quaintance with the various classes of the community, com- 
 ing into contact with the principles and modes of thought of 
 various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits, 
 and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship, 
 gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how 
 low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in 
 their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon 
 the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be 
 it bad, and is popularly called its enlargement. (Newman.) 
 
 1 8. This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked 
 
EMPHASIS 55 
 
 more rich and prosperous, than in that opening summer of 
 1815, when its green fields and quiet cities were enlivened by 
 multiplied red-coats: when its wide chaussees swarmed with 
 brilliant English equipages; when its great canal-boats, 
 gliding by rich pastures and pleasant quaint old villages, by 
 old chateaux lying amongst old trees, were all crowded with 
 well-to-do English travelers; when the soldier who drank 
 at the village inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and 
 Donald, the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house, 
 rocked the baby's cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out 
 getting in the hay. ( Thackeray.) 
 
 (See also the selections on pages 79-91.) 
 
 C. Classify the sentences of one or two of your themes 
 with regard to periodicity. 
 
 D. Write ten periodic or virtually periodic sentences, 
 each sentence longer than the one before. 
 
 E. Study the placing of pivotal words and other impor- 
 tant words in an essay by Macaulay, an address by Presi- 
 dent Wilson, etc. 
 
 F. Write ten sentences in which the pivotal words are 
 placed at the end. 
 
 G. Write ten sentences involving a departure from the 
 natural word order. 
 
 H. Convert all the periodic sentences in B into loose and 
 the loose into periodic sentences. 
 
 I. Make the following sentences more emphatic by im- 
 proving the italicized words: 
 
 1 . He preached a good sermon. 
 
 2. The view from Pike's Peak is interesting. 
 
 3. I am certainly sorry to hear of his death. 
 
 4. Thinking he was in France, I was surprised to see him walk- 
 ing down the village street. 
 
56 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 5. I believe that his robbing the bank was wrong. 
 
 6. She is an awfully nice girl. 
 
 7. It was a fine day; the sun was shining brightly; and the sky 
 was clear. 
 
 8. I spoke to him along these lines as he sat smoking the fra- 
 grant weed. 
 
 9. When called upon to speak, he managed to reply in a few 
 well-chosen words and to make a speech that was worthy of 
 a better cause. 
 
 10. It's a cinch that I'm not going to kick against the grade 
 Prof White gave me in English Lit. 
 
 11. I got only a look as the runaway horse passed by me. 
 
 12. The trains came together with a big noise. 
 
 13. The surprised soldier at once picked up the bomb and 
 threw it back into the enemy's trench. 
 
 14. The heavy body of the suffering animal/*?// to the floor. 
 
 15. The frightened deer ran away from us. 
 
 J. Improve the wording of the following description: 
 
 It was a fine autumn landscape all right. The trees were 
 brightly colored, and the river could be seen running through the 
 meadows and woods. The furry denizens of the forest were getting 
 ready for the snow and old Boreas. Down by the river a bird 
 could be heard singing, and another kind of bird was hammering in 
 the woods. Smoke was coming out of the chimney of a farm- 
 house nestling in the valley, beside which a few trees stood like 
 sentinels* 
 
 4. Economy. Writing is not, of course, a private matter. 
 When we speak of it as self-expression we do not mean that 
 we write merely to amuse ourselves, to give our powers 
 play. Sometimes we do write for such a motive; but at 
 the same time, in the background of the mind, is an ever- 
 present sense of the public. Unconsciously we are ever 
 asking ourselves such questions as: "Will this be clear to 
 the reader 1" " Will he get the full force of this 1" " Could 
 
ECONOMY 57 
 
 this be misinterpreted?" Writing should be regarded, 
 then, not as soliloquy, but as the transmission of thought 
 from one mind to another. It is not an end in itself, but a 
 means a machine for the transmission of thought, as 
 the wireless telegraph is. 
 
 It follows that good writing, like good machinery, must 
 operate smoothly, with a minimum of friction. Economy 
 demands that the thought be transferred in its entirety 
 and without distortion. Any mode of writing that calls 
 attention to itself violates the principle of economy. If 
 the attention of the reader is attracted to offensive mis- 
 spellings, to blunders in grammar, to misleading punctua- 
 tion, to the use of slang, to excessive cleverness in phrasing, 
 to the use of showy language, to monotony of sentence con- 
 struction, the amount of attention given to the thought is 
 diminished in proportion. It is as though, in telling a man 
 where Squire Jones lives, we interspersed our directions 
 with disturbing comments on the state of the weather and 
 the high cost of living in these parts. Once more we must 
 return to our fundamental principle: the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth. It is the writer's mes- 
 sage that we want, nothing more or less. 
 
 Two kinds of friction are especially to be avoided; the 
 expression of thought is retarded by every tangled con- 
 struction, and clogged by every unnecessary word: 
 
 Tangled Constructions. When the structure of your sen- 
 tence is involved, you are unconsciously asking the reader 
 to untangle it, to recast it mentally, to repair your 
 machinery, before he can quite grasp the meaning. 
 Consider the thought of the following sentence from Pride 
 and Prejudice: 
 
 The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had 
 
58 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward 
 her sister's match which she had feared to encourage, as an exer- 
 tion of goodness too great to be probable, and at the same time 
 dreaded to be just, from the pain of obligation, were proved be- 
 yond their greatest extent to be true! 
 
 What does it all mean ? Jane Austen did not often write so 
 tangled a sentence. 
 
 Unnecessary Words. When you use an unnecessary 
 word or phrase, you are putting an obstacle, however 
 slight, before the reader are throwing sand on the ma- 
 chinery. Our words should be adequate, neither too few 
 nor too many. The danger of using too few words is not 
 serious, since to say a thing briefly is harder than to say it 
 verbosely. The danger of using too many words must be 
 constantly remembered by the writer who aims at skillful 
 expression. Sometimes he can reduce the number of words 
 by simply omitting some of them, as in this sentence: 
 
 Whenever I meet him he [always] greets me. 
 
 At other times he can do it by condensing the phrasing, 
 by substituting, that is, a short phrase for a longer one, as 
 in this sentence: 
 
 He was very sorry indeed to hear the bad news. 
 He was grieved to hear the news. 
 
 EXERCISE XVII 
 
 A. Recast the following sentences in such a manner as 
 to bring out clearly the intended meaning. 
 
 1. Germany was not long in seeing that by the acquisition of 
 Alsace-Lorraine France would be reduced to a second-class 
 power, and at the same time bring Germany to the fiont. 
 
 2. The Monroe Doctiine is a policy of the United States to 
 regard the^attempt of any European power to gain a foothold 
 
ECONOMY 59 
 
 in the New World by conquest, or to acquire any new estab- 
 lishment in America by any means, will be considered as an 
 unfriendly act to the United States. 
 
 3. When I remember how hard it was for me in those days early 
 in the term to write a short theme, I marvel even a one- 
 page theme I really marvel that I ever survived those 
 days, when I consider how the words come trippingly from 
 my pen now, these days, when writing is a simple matter to 
 me, and the contrast is great. 
 
 4. When these acts of violence would reach the press and be 
 immediately published only added fuel to the flames. 
 
 5. If it does not rain to-morrow, we shall drive on to Himmels- 
 ville, if the roads are good enough. 
 
 6. Because the Germans have taken possession of Russian 
 provinces and invaded the heart of Russia proves that the 
 Germans are insincere in their promises. 
 
 7. He runs a hotel which there are not the best things in the 
 world said about it. 
 
 8. As we approached the fire, we saw piles of furniture and 
 other articles which boys had brought from the fraternity 
 houses, which two of them were burning very fast. 
 
 B. Condense the phrasing in the following sentences 
 and paragraphs without subtracting from the thought. 
 
 1. The wounded prisoner was suffering intensely from his 
 painful wounds. 
 
 2. I know that I am right, for I saw the accident as an eye- 
 witness. 
 
 3. With not a single opposing vote, he was unanimously elected 
 president. 
 
 4. All the crowd rose together upon their feet with one accord 
 and wildly waved their hats in their hands. 
 
 5. He is at the height of his power and will never be more 
 powerful. 
 
 6. In place of the regular night service an afternoon service 
 will be substituted instead. 
 
60 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 7. He is universally praised by everybody. 
 
 8. There are several reasons for the great interest taken in foot- 
 ball, and I attribute the principal one to the life and spirit 
 put into the game by the players. 
 
 9. The King appointed royal governors to represent him and 
 these were usually harsh rulers, who made the colonists give 
 up certain rights and do as they wanted them to do, although 
 the colonists did not wish to do so. 
 
 10. We learned that it would take time to repair the automobile, 
 and we walked to the nearest village, had some lunch, and 
 we then returned to the scene of the accident, but the ma- 
 chine had not yet been repaired, and we tried to help the 
 driver repair it, but our efforts were all in vain. 
 
 11. Near the road is an old house and it is now deserted and 
 covered by dust, but it was once the home of the governor 
 of the State, who lived there until the death of his wife, and 
 who moved away about ten years ago. 
 
 12. Up to this time the efforts of the local custodians of the la\? 
 to apprehend the men who make illicit whiskey near tht 
 town have proved absolutely unsuccessful, for they have not 
 captured a single man, although it is commonly reported by 
 everybody that there are hundreds of men engaged in the 
 lucrative and profitable business of making and selling whis^ 
 key, beer, brandy, and wines of every description. 
 
 13. On the edge of the road, at the point where it made a sharp 
 turn before it led down the hill, there was standing a coach, 
 and it looked black and very large in the white snow. The 
 coach was crookedly imbedded in the snow, and there were 
 no horses attached to it. 
 
 14. I was walking along a well-worn and much-used path which 
 ran along a small creek, just as the setting sun was slowly 
 sinking behind several clouds over the western horizon. 
 The clouds were tinted a yellow-red by the rays of the setting 
 sun, and the color of the clouds was reflected distinctly in the 
 smooth surface of the water, turning its color to a very light 
 pink. The trees were bare, as the leaves with their red color 
 
VAGUENESS 61 
 
 had fallen to the ground to protect it from the approaching 
 winter which was near at hand. 
 
 5. Vagueness. The principles of composition that we 
 have considered should lead, if faithfully followed, to skill- 
 ful writing, writing that is clear, emphatic, and varied 
 above all, clear. The principles of subordination, parallel- 
 ism, emphasis, and economy call for clear thinking, and 
 clear thinking, as we know, almost inevitably means clear 
 writing. Conversely, it follows that if writing is vague, 
 the thinking that preceded the writing was probably 
 vague. 
 
 Yet there are certain syntactical pitfalls that waylay 
 the writing of even a clear thinker, errors in sentence struc- 
 ture that human flesh including such authors as Haw- 
 thorne and Thackeray is heir to. It is the business of 
 every writer to understand the nature of these errors and 
 the readiest modes of correction. 
 
 Reference. When we say, "The French nation is the 
 most admirable in the world. They are the standard- 
 bearers of civilization." we are reproducing in expres- 
 sion an error in our thinking. They lacks an antecedent 
 because we committed the error of supposing that we were 
 talking about the French or the French people. We didn't 
 know what we were talking about! The sentences should 
 have read: 
 
 The French nation is the most admirable in the world. It is 
 the standard-bearer of civilization. 
 
 The same error is involved in the case of the dangling 
 participle. We should not write: 
 
 Having eaten our lunch, the river trip was resumed. 
 Grammatically, the participial phrase must modify the 
 
62 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 subject of the governing clause; grammatically speaking, 
 therefore, we are saying that the river trip ate our lunch! 
 That was not in our minds, of course then it should not 
 be in our sentence. If we ate the lunch, we should be the 
 subject of the governing clause: 
 
 Having eaten our lunch, we resumed the river trip. 
 
 The participle Having eaten, instead of dangling in the air 
 with nothing to attach itself to logically, is now securely 
 fastened to its grammatical and logical master-word we. 
 
 Precisely the same thing happens in the case of the 
 dangling elliptical clause, a clause that is termed ellipti- 
 cal because its subject and predicate are omitted, and 
 dangling because it is not properly fastened to the govern- 
 ing clause. For example: 
 
 When four years old, my grandmother died. 
 
 Since When four years old is grammatically dependent on 
 the subject of the governing clause, grandmother, we have 
 unwittingly said that our grandparent died at the ripe old 
 age of four. The simplest remedy in this case is to restore 
 the omitted subject and predicate of the elliptical clause: 
 
 When I was four years old, my grandmother died. 
 
 EXERCISE XVIII 
 
 Correct the faulty reference in the following sentences: 
 
 1. Kultur is a word used in Germany to indicate their ideal. 
 
 2. When six years old, my father took me to school. 
 
 3. Upon opening the door the door mat tripped me up. 
 
 4. The molten iron is very heavy, causing it to sink to the 
 bottom. 
 
 5. While before the fireplace, the butler came in and handed 
 him a letter. 
 
VAGUENESS 63 
 
 6. After seeing that the tires are in order, the engine was 
 started by him. 
 
 7. Turning a bend in the road, the little town could be plainly 
 seen. 
 
 8. Never having seen the house, it was impossible for me to 
 describe it. 
 
 9. Although very young, my grandfather asked me to go with 
 him. 
 
 10. Entering the building, it was obvious that some one had 
 been there recently. 
 
 11. Being in a test-tube, I could watch the crystals grow. 
 
 12. Looking back upon the events of this night, they now appear 
 strangely unreal. 
 
 13. Upon questioning my sister, she showed a decided reluctance 
 to explain. 
 
 14. While very young and tender, he carefully watched the 
 plants grow. 
 
 15. The cover is put on again so that the contents may not be 
 lost while carrying it to the vault. 
 
 16. After setting the vase in this insecure position, it naturally 
 tumbled over when the door was slammed. 
 
 17. Sitting for three hours in the sun, my clothes became dry 
 enough to walk home. 
 
 1 8. Hated and persecuted by the people of his time, one cannot 
 help sympathizing with Shylock. 
 
 19. Although blest with a loving wife, she was too ambitious 
 for the welfare of her husband. 
 
 20. Let every American uphold the President and do their part 
 in winning this war. 
 
 21. They had such different customs from those we now have 
 that it is a curiosity. 
 
 22. On entering the porch, the eye is struck with the appearance 
 of ease and comfort that characterized it. 
 
 Point of view. When you are looking out over a land- 
 scape, you see everything that is visible from where you are 
 
64 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 standing, and nothing else. You do not see the other side 
 of the barn, any more than you see the other side of the 
 moon coming up over the barn. If you describe what you 
 cannot see, you are false, false to your senses and to your 
 mind. So when you write: 
 
 In order to make the. furnace burn harder, the lower door 
 must be opened. 
 
 you commit the same blunder, by regarding your 
 thought from the point of view, first, of a person, and 
 secondly, of the door of the furnace. Sentences, of course, 
 should be consistent in point of view, as our minds are 
 when they are operating efficiently. We should adopt, in 
 the sentence above, either the point of view of the person, 
 or the point of view of the object: 
 
 In order to make the furnace burn harder, you must open the 
 lower door. 
 
 In order that the furnace may be made to burn harder, the 
 lower door must be opened. 
 
 In the writing of narration, uniformity in point of view 
 is often violated by the abuse of the historical present 
 tense, by the purposeless shifting from the past tense to the 
 present. The historical present is a legitimate device when 
 used by a skillful writer in a moment of high excitement 
 during the narration of an event; though writing in the past 
 tense, he is emotionally carried away by the reality of the 
 action and spontaneously resorts, for the moment, to the 
 present tense. On the basis of our conception that what is in 
 the mind should determine what is written on paper, this 
 is as it should be. Too often, however, an unskillful writer, 
 instead of looking to his thought and feeling, looks to the 
 practiced writer for a hint to help him in writing cleverly, 
 and in cold blood proceeds to confuse his tenses: 
 
VAGUENESS 65 
 
 The flames were mounting higher and higher, and we began to 
 wonder whether they would reach the window where she stood. 
 A fireman runs up with a shout, but she did not hear him, and 
 just stood there. She stands for a long time, as if .dazed, and 
 then was hidden by the smoke. What shall we do? 
 
 The apprentice at the art of writing will do well to avoid 
 this means of securing vividness altogether; he will be more 
 likely to attain vividness if he uses one tense, either past 
 or present, throughout. 
 
 EXERCISE XIX 
 
 Make the point of view in the following sentences con- 
 sistent. 
 
 1. Girls fed the sheets in separately and they came out smooth 
 and glossy at the other end of the machine. 
 
 2. To repair the furnace, it must be taken apart. 
 
 3. We walked through the older parts of the city, where many 
 quaint old sights were seen. 
 
 4. I told him to come as soon as he can. 
 
 5. To have a fast game of baseball, the balls should be new. 
 
 6. As I grew older, it was still my desire to make a success, and 
 I have not yet changed. 
 
 7. I told him that I haven't read the book. 
 
 8. To avoid notoriety, the name of the hero is not given. 
 
 9. They retained possession of these lands until the Franco- 
 Prussian War in 1870, and they were again wrested from 
 them by the Germans. 
 
 10. In order to study actual conditions of modern warfare, real 
 
 trenches are being dug at our college. 
 n. We went through the mechanical department, where many 
 
 wonderful machines were seen. 
 
 12. We all put our shoulders to the wheel and soon the wagon 
 was pulled out of the ditch. 
 
 13. In order to learn scientific farming, chemistry must hs 
 studied. 
 
66 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 14. These buildings are very old and students have been living 
 in them for many years. 
 
 15. The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to 
 the bear, but because the spectators were given pleasure. 
 
 16. He had talent, but it did not seem to do him much good. 
 
 17. The Monroe Doctrine gave great encouragement to the 
 young republics of South America, and they were enabled to 
 develop their own systems of government. 
 
 1 8. To secure these ends, it is necessary for the American people 
 to develop more friendly relations with their neighbors. 
 
 Transition. Good writing is the expression of connected 
 thinking. Stray thoughts set down one after another 
 without relation could not be regarded as good writing, 
 unless the thoughts were so fresh and penetrating, and so 
 admirably phrased, that the reader would want to preserve 
 them. Most of Emerson's essays are made up of such 
 thoughts, first recorded in a notebook, then strung together 
 on a fragile thread of thought and published as an essay: 
 yet Emerson is called by Matthew Arnold the foremost 
 prose writer of the nineteenth century. But most men, 
 both greater and smaller than Emerson, think more con- 
 nectedly, more logically, as we say, and are therefore bound 
 to write otherwise. Connected thinking calls for con- 
 nected writing. It is not enough that the thought should 
 move logically from sentence to sentence; there must be an 
 equivalent connection in the phrasing. It is logical to say: 
 
 I am glad to see the President powerful. He has too much 
 power. 
 
 But the signs of connected thinking are lacking. We 
 should say: 
 
 I am glad to see the President powerful. But he has too much 
 power. 
 
 I am glad to see the President powerful, but he has too much 
 power. 
 
VAGUENESS 67 
 
 The first statement may be called positive, the second 
 negative, subtracting something from the first, somewhat 
 as 4 1=3. Omission of a but, which often serves as the 
 minus sign in writing, may, of course, be highly confusing. 
 We have at our disposal at least three types of connec- 
 tives: we may repeat a word, generally a noun; we may use 
 a pronoun or other reference word, such as they or then; or 
 we may use a conjunction (see pp. 12-13, 32-33) or a con- 
 junctive adverb (see p. 13). A good writer, it is sometimes 
 said, may be recognized most readily by the skill with which 
 he employs connectives the frequency and the discrimi- 
 nation with which he uses them. One could not find a 
 better receipt for avoiding vagueness than this: if possible, 
 link every sentence with the preceding sentence or sentences. 
 Note the connectives in the following passage (those link- 
 ing sentences have been printed in capital letters, those 
 linking parts of sentences in italics) : 
 
 On passing from a country in which free institutions are estab- 
 lished to one where they do not exist, the traveller is struck by 
 the change; in the former all is bustle and activity, in the latter 
 everything is calm and motionless. In THE ONE, melioration 
 and progress are the general topics of inquiry; in THE OTHER, 
 it seems as if the community only aspired to repose in the enjoy- 
 ment of the advantages which it has acquired. NEVERTHE- 
 LESS, the country which exerts itself so strenuously to promote 
 its welfare is generally more wealthy and more prosperous than 
 that which appears to be so contented with its lot; and when we 
 compare them together, we can scarcely conceive how so many 
 wants are daily felt in the former, while so few seem to occur in the 
 latter. 
 
 If THIS remark is applicable to those free countries in which 
 monarchical and aristocratic institutions subsist, it is still more 
 striking with regard to democratic republics. In THESE States 
 it is not only a portion of the people which is busied with the 
 
68 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 melioration of its social condition, but the whole community is 
 engaged in the task; and it is not the exigencies and the conven- 
 ience of a single class for which a provision is to be made, but the 
 exigencies and the convenience of all ranks of life. (Tocqueville.) 
 
 EXERCISE XX 
 
 A. Copy the paragraph on page 79 beginning, "Now 
 there are some clear objects for choice . . ." ; single under- 
 line the links within the sentence and double underline the 
 links between sentences. 
 
 B. List all the connectives that occur in a theme or two 
 that you have written, and then list the connectives in a 
 passage of the same length from Burke or Arnold. 
 
 C. Choose from the list on pages 32-33 ten connectives 
 that you rarely or never use, and write a passage, or sev- 
 eral passages, in which you use them discriminately. 
 
 D. Clip from a newspaper an editorial in which connec- 
 tives are used with skill. Underline the connectives. 
 
 E. Write a theme of 150 words preferably a comment 
 in which each sentence is linked with the preceding sen- 
 tence or sentences. 
 
 F. Supply connectives in the following passage: 
 
 The difference between popular and learned words may be 
 easily seen in a few examples. We may describe a girl as " lively" 
 
 or as "vivacious." In the case, we are using a native 
 
 English formation from the familiar noun life , we are 
 
 using a Latin derivative which has precisely meaning. 
 
 the atmosphere of the two words is quite different. No 
 
 one ever got the adjective lively out of a book is part 
 
 of everybody's vocabulary. We cannot remember a time when 
 we did not know it, and we feel sure that we learned it long before 
 jve were able to read , we must have passed several 
 
EXERCISING IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE 69 
 
 years of our lives before learning the word vivacious. We may 
 even remember the first time that we saw it in print or heard it 
 from some grown-up friend who was talking over our childish 
 
 heads lively vivacious are good English 
 
 words, lively is "popular" and vivacious is " learned." 
 
 G. Study the effect of repetition in the paragraph on 
 page 8 1 beginning: "Not that your great numbers." 
 
 EXERCISE XXI 
 
 A General Exercise in Sentence Structure 
 Discuss the effectiveness of the following sentences: 
 
 1. The writer who is unusually fluent should take warning from 
 the instructions which accompany his fountain-pen: When 
 this pen flows too freely it is a sign that it is nearly empty 
 and should be filled. (Crothers.} 
 
 2. To ascertain and communicate facts is the object of science; 
 to quicken our life into a higher consciousness through the 
 feelings is the function of art. (Dozuden.) 
 
 3. Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in 
 whose power a man is. (Lowell.} 
 
 4. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the 
 accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disquali- 
 fied by the accident of death. (Chesterton.} 
 
 5. Sculpture is particularly good for the mind: there is a height 
 and divine stillness about it which preaches peace to our 
 stormy passions. (Tennyson.} 
 
 6. No more firing was heard at Brussels the pursuit rolled 
 miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and 
 Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, 
 dead, with a bullet through his heart. (Thackeray.} 
 
 7. To make the common marvellous, as if it were a revelation, 
 is the test of genius. (Lowell.} 
 
 8. He will find one English book and one only, where, as in the 
 
70 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect 
 nobleness; and that book is the Bible. (Arnold.} 
 9. Let us consider, too, how differently young and old are af- 
 fected by the words of some classic author, such as Homer or 
 Horace. Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical com- 
 monplaces, neither better nor worse than a hundred others 
 which any clever writer might supply, which he gets by heart 
 and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, 
 in his own flowing versification, at length come home to him, 
 when long years have passed, and he has had experience of 
 life, and pierce him as if he had never before known them, 
 with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he 
 comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some 
 chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival, or among 
 the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation, for 
 thousands of years, with a power over the mind, and a 
 charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all 
 its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival. (Newman.) 
 10. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. 
 He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: 
 he who has something to assert will go as far in power of 
 style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. 
 Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet his style remains. 
 Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job nor of Handel 
 than Martin Luther destroyed the style of Giotto. All the 
 assertions get disproved sooner or later; and so we find 
 the world full of a magnificent debris of artistic fossils, with 
 the matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of them, but the 
 form still splendid. And that is why the old masters play 
 the deuce with our mere susceptibles. Your Royal Academi- 
 cian thinks he can get the style of Giotto (without Giotto's 
 beliefs), and correct his perspective into the bargain. Your 
 man of letters thinks he can get Bunyan's or Shakespear's 
 style without Bunyan's conviction or Shakespear's appre- 
 hension, especially if he takes care not to split his infinitive. 
 (Shaw.) 
 
EXERCISING IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE 71 
 
 11. All in all, the style of an author is the true image of his mind. 
 He who would write clearly, ought first to think clearly, and 
 whoever would have a grand style must first have a grand 
 character. (Goethe.} 
 
 12. We are in such haste to be doing, to be writing, to be gather- 
 ing gear, to make our voices audible a moment in the deri- 
 sive silence of eternity, that we forget that one thing, of 
 which these are but the parts namely, to live. (Stevenson.} 
 
 13. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of 
 envy dies in me; when Tread the epitaphs of the beautiful, 
 every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief 
 of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compas- 
 sion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I con- 
 sider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly 
 follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, 
 when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy 
 men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, 
 I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competi- 
 tions, factions, and debates of mankind. (Addison.} 
 
 14. As the eye, in surveying a Gothic building, is distracted by 
 the multiplicity of ornaments, and loses the whole by a min- 
 ute attention to the parts; so the mind, in perusing a work 
 overstocked with wit, is fatigued and disgusted with the 
 constant endeavor to shine and surprise. (Hume.} 
 
 15. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
 think on these things. (St. Paul.} 
 
 16. As Wordsworth's poetry is, in my judgment, the most im- 
 portant work done in verse, in our language, during the pres- 
 ent century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most im- 
 portant work done in prose. (Arnold.} 
 
 17. After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, 
 fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, strug- 
 gling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of 
 
72 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 this troubled state, at length comes death, at length the 
 white throne of God, at length the beatific vision. (Arnold.} 
 
 1 8. That only is true enlargement of mind which is the power of 
 viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them 
 severally to their true place in the universal system, of un- 
 derstanding their respective values, and determining their 
 mutual dependence. (Newman.} 
 
 19. Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized com- 
 mon sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may 
 differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of 
 common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust 
 differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. 
 (Huxley.} 
 
 20. It is plain that the appreciation of literature is a continuing 
 process, and depends on increase of experience in the per- 
 sonal life, and on growth of the imaginative and sympathetic 
 powers. ... It is a measure of growth because it proceeds 
 from growth; to love the poets is a certificate of manhood, a 
 proof that one has put forth the powers and appropriated 
 the means of life, that one is on the way at least to be human- 
 ized. (G. E. Woodberry.} 
 
 21. The reader takes so much of the book as has affinity with 
 him, and it is as if the book were re-written in his mind; in- 
 deed, it often happens that the book which was written is 
 not the book which is read, so great is the reader's share in 
 that blending of two souls which is the act of reading. 
 (Woodberry.} 
 
 22. Not in an obscure corner, not in a feudal Europe, not in an 
 antiquated appanage where no onward step can be taken 
 without rebellion, is this seed of benevolence laid in the fur- 
 row, with tears of hope; but in this broad America of God 
 and man, where the forest is only now falling, or yet to fall, 
 and the green earth opened to the inundation of emigrant 
 men from all quarters of oppression and guilt; here, where 
 not a family, not a few men, but mankind, shall say what 
 shall be; here, we ask, Shall it be War, or shall it be Peace? 
 (Emerson.} 
 
EXERCISING IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE 73 
 
 23. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou nearest the 
 sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and 
 whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit. 
 (St. John.) 
 
 24. It is rather for us to be dedicated here to the great task re- 
 maining before us, that from these honored dead we take 
 increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the 
 last full measure of devotion that we here highly re- 
 solve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this 
 nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and 
 that government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
 shall not perish from the earth. (Lincoln.) 
 
 25. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not 
 coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days 
 and nights to the volumes of Addison. (Johnson.) 
 
 26. Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon x thine arm: 
 for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave; the 
 coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement 
 flame. 
 
 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods 
 drown it; if a man give all the substance of his house for love, 
 it would utterly be contemned. (Solomon.) 
 
 27. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinites- 
 imal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 
 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! 
 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, dp it with thy whole 
 might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night com- 
 eth, wherein no man can work. (Carlyle.) 
 
 28. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with 
 change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal 
 in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that pre- 
 ceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her 
 can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the 
 engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though 
 many of her palaces are forever defaced, and many in dese- 
 crated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, 
 
74 SENTENCES AND THINKING 
 
 that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the 
 wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be 
 led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes 
 to the depth of her desolation. (Ruskin.) 
 
 29. To still sit and contemplate, to remember the faces of 
 women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men 
 without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy, 
 and yet content to remain where and what you are is not 
 this to know both wisdom and virtue, and to dwell with 
 happiness? (Stevenson.} 
 
 30. From thence he could discern, at a single glance, how ardu- 
 ous was the task before him. Piles of lofty cliffs rose with 
 sheer ascent on the northern border of the river; and from 
 their summits the boasted citadel of Canada looked down in 
 proud security, with its churches and convents of stone, its 
 ramparts, bastions, and batteries; while over them all, from 
 the brink of the precipice, towered the massive walls of the 
 Castle of St. Louis. (Parkman.) 
 
 31. Scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have thought it 
 possible that a trading company, separated from India by 
 fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only a 
 few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in less than a 
 hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the 
 eternal snows of the Himalayas; would compel Mahratta and 
 Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common sub- 
 jection; would tame down even those wild races which had 
 resisted the most powerful of the Moguls; and having united 
 under its laws a hundred million of subjects, would carry its 
 victorious arms far to the east of the Burrampooter, and far 
 to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the 
 gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar. 
 (Macaulay.) 
 
 32. Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the 
 vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning was now 
 the color of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed 
 army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated 
 
EXERCISING IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE 75 
 
 position could see over the landscape for at least half a 
 dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was dis- 
 tinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock in the same direc- 
 tion was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible 
 at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and 
 maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the 
 air, their heads to tarth. A poplar in the immediate fore- 
 ground was like an ink-stroke on burnished tin. Then the 
 picture vanished, leaving a darkness so intense that Gabriel 
 worked entirely by feeling with his hands. (Hardy.) 
 
 33. Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the coun- 
 try at the foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, 
 quiver, extinguished. Then there were pauses; and the 
 lightning seemed as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as 
 the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him; filling 
 him with awful rapture. Alone there sole human creature 
 among the grandeurs and mysteries of storm he felt the 
 representative of his kind, and his spirits rose, and marched, 
 and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin! Lower down the 
 lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash: then white 
 thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and great curving 
 ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally 
 agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused in the 
 leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, 
 as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty force 
 of water satisfied the desire of the earth. (Meredith.) 
 
 34. What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent 
 of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion 
 of mankind. (Wilson.) 
 
 35. As a university it is a living unity, an organism at the heart 
 of the living democratic state, interpreting its life, not by 
 parts, nor by a summary of parts, but wholly, fusing the 
 functions of brain and heart and hand under the power of 
 the immortal spirit of democracy as it moves in present 
 American life to the complete realization of what men really 
 want. (E. K. Graham.) 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 THE most profitable practice in the principles of subor- 
 dination, parallelism, and emphasis will be found in the 
 writing of summary sentences. The summary sentence, as 
 the term is here used, is a sentence which expresses all the 
 essential thought of a paragraph. Such a sentence is not 
 ordinarily used in actual writing, though it sometimes oc- 
 curs at the end of a long or difficult passage, and though the 
 topic sentence is sometimes a virtual summary sentence. 
 
 Generally, the topic sentence is inadequate as a sum- 
 mary of the thought of the paragraph, for the reason that 
 it merely points to the subject treated, without indicating 
 precisely how it is treated. It is often no more than the 
 label on a bottle; the summary sentence, on the other hand, 
 is always a distillation of the contents. 
 
 How should one set about the writing of a summary sen- 
 tence? Given a paragraph, more or less misunderstood by 
 a hasty reader; wanted, a single, deft sentence that shall 
 embody the thought of the paragraph: obviously, the thing 
 cannot be done in a moment. Although the practiced 
 writer of summary sentences may sometimes compose his 
 sentence by merely reflecting on the substance of the para- 
 graph, the novice will probably find it necessary to go 
 through a rather exacting analysis. A short paragraph 
 from the War Message will afford an example. 
 
 We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no 
 feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was 
 not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering 
 
THE TOPIC SENTENCE 77 
 
 this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. 
 It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon 
 in the old, unhappy days, when peoples were nowhere consulted 
 by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest 
 of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accus- 
 tomed to use their fellowmen as pawns and tools. 
 
 1. What does the paragraph mean? It goes without 
 saying that one must know exactly what the thought is 
 before one is in a position to express it in a sentence. The 
 paragraph above happens to be a very simple one, so that 
 its meaning will be clear on a second reading if it is not 
 clear on the first. Often, however, certain difficulties must 
 be overcome: (a) unusual words, (b) words used in unusual 
 senses, (c) tangled or obscure sentences, (d) allusions. A 
 good dictionary is an indispensable part of our equipment. 
 
 2. What is the topic sentence? Now that we know what 
 the paragraph means, we are prepared to begin to express 
 its meaning. Let us choose, as a convenient skeleton for 
 our summary sentence, the topic sentence. If the topic 
 sentence is found to express all the important thought of 
 the paragraph, we shall need to modify it very little; but 
 ordinarily it will serve only as a starting-point. The topic 
 sentence in our paragraph is the first sentence: 
 
 We have no quarrel with the German people. 
 
 3. What additions to and subtractions from the topic 
 sentence are to be made? We can see at a glance that our 
 topic sentence does not express all the important meaning 
 of the paragraph. "We have no quarrel with the German 
 people" - is that all that President Wilson is saying? By 
 no means. After repeating the idea in the second sentence, 
 he goes on, in the third and succeeding sentences, to explain 
 why we have no quarrel with the German people. The 
 
78 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 topic sentence indicates what he is talking about, but what 
 he is saying is another matter. The fact that the war was 
 begun without the German people's knowledge or approval 
 must be got into our summary sentence. It must be 
 added; apparently there is nothing, in this case, to sub- 
 tract. Let us add it then: 
 
 We have no quarrel with the German people, and this is the 
 case because the German Government began the war without 
 their knowledge or approval. 
 
 4. Can the sentence be made periodic? Since one 
 thought in the paragraph is likely to be of more importance 
 than all other thoughts, we shall rarely be able to accept a 
 summary sentence that is cast in the mould of a compound 
 sentence. We shall need a simple or a complex sentence, 
 preferably periodic in structure. That means putting first 
 our subordinate matter: "and this is the case because" 
 etc. Reserving our main clause to the end, then, we may 
 get some such result as this: 
 
 Because the German Government began the war without their 
 knowledge or approval, we have no quarrel with the German 
 people. 
 
 Or, better: 
 
 Because the Government began the war without the knowledge 
 or approval of the German people, with them we have no quarrel. 
 
 5. Can the phrasing of the sentence be condensed? 
 
 There is always danger that a summary sentence will be 
 cumbersomely long and involved. What we are seeking 
 is the briefest, neatest form compatible with comprehen- 
 siveness. In the sentence above, no further condensation 
 is necessary; several words have already been omitted 
 the first sentence numbering twenty-five words, the last 
 one twenty-one. 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 79 
 
 6. Have we a connective? Have we repeated one of the 
 pivotal words or phrases of the preceding summary sen- 
 tence, or used a suitable pronoun, or added a conjunction? 
 In this case, the link is the word Government, which would 
 occur in a good summary sentence of the preceding para- 
 graph of the War Message. If possible, link every sum- 
 mary sentence to the preceding summary sentence by the 
 use of some sign of transition in the thought. (See, once 
 more, the discussion of transition, pp. 66-67.) 
 
 If these suggestions are faithfully followed, the student 
 will not only learn to write acceptable summary sentences, 
 but will strengthen his command of the principles of sen- 
 tence and paragraph construction. 
 
 EXERCISE XXH 
 
 Write summary sentences for the following paragraphs, 
 taking care to observe the six points treated above: 
 
 Now, there are some clear objects for choice here in college, for 
 real choice, for discreet choice. I will mention only two. In the 
 first place, choose those studies there is a great range of them 
 here which will, through your interest in them, develop your 
 working power. You know that it is only through work that you 
 can achieve anything, either in college or in the world. Choose 
 those studies on which you can work intensely with pleasure, with 
 real satisfaction and happiness. That is the true guide to a wise 
 choice. Choose that intellectual pursuit which will develop 
 within you the power to do enthusiastic work, an internal motive 
 power, not an external compulsion. Then, choose an ennobling 
 companionship. You will find out in five minutes that this man 
 stirs you to do good, that man to evil. Shun the latter; cling to 
 the former. Choose companionship rightly; choose your whole 
 surroundings so that they shall lift you up and not drag you down. 
 Make these two choices wisely, and be faithful in labor, and you 
 will succeed in college and in after life. (Charles W. Eliot.) 
 
80 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 The entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall marked a deep 
 and lasting change in the temper of the English people. With it 
 modern England began. The influences which had up to this 
 time molded our history, the theological influence of the Reforma- 
 tion, the monarchical influence of the new kingship, the feudal 
 influence of the Middle Ages, the yet earlier influence of tradition 
 and custom, suddenly lost power over the minds of men. From 
 the moment of the Restoration we find ourselves all at once 
 among the great currents of thought and activity which have gone 
 on widening and deepening from that time to this. The England 
 around us becomes our own England, an England whose chief 
 forces are industry and science, the love of popular freedom and 
 of law, an England which presses steadily forward to a larger 
 social justice and equality, and which tends more and more to 
 bring every custom and tradition, religious, intellectual, and po- 
 litical, to the test of pure reason. Between modern thought, on 
 some at least of its more important sides, and the thought of men 
 before the Restoration there is a great gulf fixed. A political 
 thinker in the present day would find it equally hard to discuss 
 any point of statesmanship with Lord Burleigh or with Oliver 
 Cromwell. He would find no point of contact between their ideas 
 of national life or national welfare, their conception of govern- 
 ment or the ends of government, their mode of regarding economi- 
 cal and social questions, and his own. But no gulf of this sort 
 parts us from the men who followed the Restoration. From that 
 time to this, whatever differences there may have been as to 
 practical conclusions drawn from them, there has been a sub- 
 stantial agreement as to the grounds of our political, our social, 
 our intellectual and religious life. Paley would have found no 
 difficulty in understanding Tillotson: Newton and Sir Humphry 
 Davy could have talked without a sense of severance. There 
 would have been nothing to hinder a perfectly clear discussion 
 on government or law between John Locke and Jeremy Ben- 
 tham. (Green.) 
 
 The vast scale of things here, the extent of your country, your 
 numbers, the rapidity of your increase, strike the imagination, 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 81 
 
 and are a common topic for admiring remark. Our great orator, 
 Mr. Bright, is never weary of telling us how many acres of land 
 you have at your disposal, how many bushels of grain you pro- 
 duce, how many millions you are, how many more millions you 
 will be presently, and what a capital thing this is for you. Now, 
 though I do not always agree with Mr. Bright, I find myself agree- 
 ing with him here. I think your numbers afford a very real and 
 important ground for satisfaction. 
 
 Not that your great numbers, or indeed great numbers of men 
 anywhere, are likely to be all good, or even to have the majority 
 good. " The majority are bad," said one of the wise men of Greece; 
 but he was a pagan. Much to the same effect, however, is the 
 famous sentence of the New Testament: " Many are called, few 
 chosen." This appears a hard saying; frequent are the en- 
 deavours to elude it, to attenuate its severity. But turn it how 
 you will, manipulate it as you will, the few, as Cardinal Newman 
 well says, can never mean the many. Perhaps you will say that 
 the majority is, sometimes, good; that its impulses are good gen- 
 erally, and its action is good occasionally. Yes, but it lacks prin- 
 ciple, it lacks persistence; if to-day its good impulses prevail, they 
 succumb to-morrow; sometimes it goes right, but it is very apt to 
 go wrong. Even a popular orator, or a popular journalist, will 
 hardly say that the multitude may be trusted to have its judg- 
 ment generally just, and its action generally virtuous. It may 
 be better, it is better, that the body of the people, with all its 
 faults, should act for itself, and control its own affairs, than that 
 it should be set aside as ignorant and incapable, and have its af- 
 fairs managed for it by a so-called superior class, possessing prop- 
 erty and intelligence. Property and intelligence cannot be 
 trusted to show a sound majority themselves; the exercise of 
 power by the people tends to educate the people. But still, the 
 world being what it is, we must surely expect the aims and do- 
 ings of the majority of men to be at present very faulty, and 
 this in a numerous community no less than in a small one. So 
 much we must certainly, I think, concede to the sages and to 
 the saints. (Arnold.) 
 
82 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 The failure of the melting pot, far from closing the great Arner* 
 ican democratic experiment, means that it has only just begun. 
 Whatever American nationalism turns out to be, we see already 
 that it will have a color richer and more exciting than our ideal 
 has hitherto encompassed. In a world which has dreamed of 
 internationalism, we find that we have all unawares been building 
 up the first international nation. The voices which have cried 
 for a tight and jealous nationalism of the European pattern are 
 failing. From that ideal, however valiantly and disinterestedly 
 it has been set for us, time and tendency have moved us further 
 and further away. What we have achieved has been rather a 
 cosmopolitan federation of national colonies, of foreign cultures, 
 from whom the sting of devastating competition has been re- 
 moved. America is already the world-federation in miniature, the 
 continent where for the first time in history has been achieved 
 that miracle of hope, the peaceful living side by side, with char- 
 acter substantially preserved, of the most heterogeneous peoples 
 under the sun. Nowhere else has such contiguity been anything 
 but the breeder of misery. Here, notwithstanding our tragic fail- 
 ures of adjustment, the outlines are already too clear not to give 
 us a new vision and a new orientation of the American mind in 
 the world. (Randolph Bourne.) 
 
 Why, then, do we hesitate to swell our words to meet our needs? 
 It is a nonsense question. There is no reason. We are simply 
 lazy; too lazy to make ourselves comfortable. We let our vocab- 
 ularies be limited, and get along rawly without the refinements of 
 human intercourse, without refinements in our own thoughts; for 
 thoughts are almost as dependent on words as words on thoughts. 
 For example, all exasperations we lump together as " aggravat- 
 ing," not considering whether they may not rather be displeasing, 
 annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating, or even maddening; 
 and without observing too, that in our reckless usage we have 
 burned up a word which might be convenient when we should 
 need to mark some shading of the word " increase." Like the 
 bad cook, we seize the frying pan whenever we need to fry, broil, 
 roast, or stew, and then we wonder why all our dishes taste alike 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 83 
 
 while in the next house the food is appetizing. It is all unneces- 
 sary. Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any one who wants to see 
 himself grow, resolve to adopt two new words each week. It will 
 not be long before the endless and enchanting variety of the world 
 will begin to reflect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. I 
 know that when we use a word for the first time we are startled, 
 as if a firecracker went off in our neighborhood. We look about 
 hastily to see if any one has noticed. But finding that no one has, 
 we may be emboldened. A word used three times slips off the 
 tongue with entire naturalness. Then it is ours forever, and with 
 it some phase of life which had been lacking hitherto. For each 
 word presents its own point of view, discloses a special aspect of 
 things, reports some little importance not otherwise conveyed, 
 and so contributes its small emancipation to our tied-up minds 
 and tongues. (G. H. Palmer.} 
 
 FRESHMEN AND LIFE * 
 
 This is the freshman's hour. Day by day during the past week 
 entering classes have been asked by presidents and deans to 
 consider why they have come to college and to remember that 
 student days are but a preparation for after-life. Books for their 
 special benefit also come out at this season. One by a professor 
 mindful of a first year at college wasted lies at hand. It contains 
 the usual admonition to young men to bear in mind that life is 
 earnest, to maintain steadfastness of purpose, and to cling to the 
 ideals of one's childhood. With its exalted purpose no one will 
 quarrel. In America as elsewhere the number of freshmen who 
 idle, or fall into grievous follies, through lack of timely warning, 
 is large; and only by serious, straightforward talk can they be 
 raised to their better selves. 
 
 Yet it is a question whether such advice does not misplace the 
 emphasis. Neither in the comments just cited nor in the various 
 addresses of college presidents which the book includes, are the 
 
 1 A Nation editorial; reprinted with the kind permission of the No- 
 tion. 
 
84 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 possibilities of the essential freedom of collegiate existence suffi- 
 ciently stressed. This freedom is what undoubtedly most im- 
 presses the freshman, be he by nature a loafer or serious minded; 
 for the moment it is the central fact of his life. Issuing from the 
 discipline of home or boarding school, he finds himself in an at- 
 mosphere in which he seems to be master of his destiny. The 
 resultant zest might wisely be taken by educators as a starting- 
 point. In a negative sense it is so taken. That is, men are cau- 
 tioned not to fancy that this is really freedom, and with such a 
 lead it is easy to point out that no moments of life are detached 
 from the thread of our being, that what we do to-day helps to 
 shape our attitude years hence. Now, not all freshmen are weak, 
 by any means; yet appeal is not made to the imagination of the 
 strong as it should be. To them the hearty if raucous tone of a 
 famous professor, now dead, would have a welcome sound. He 
 used to urge certain young gentlemen to have experience. " It 
 will cost you dear, but have it." The goodness of his own life for- 
 bade one to read into his words permission to do unworthy acts. 
 Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. If colleges are to 
 maintain their distinction, the note must be struck by exceptional 
 men, and the great opportunities of these should not be slighted 
 by preoccupation with saving the unfit from hardships. Democ- 
 racy in education need lead to no such extreme. 
 
 The democratic spirit has given to the accepted phrase " prepa- 
 ration for life" a meaning too strict. It is not necessary that all 
 freshmen should be made to see the precise connection between 
 college and the world at large. Colleges by splendid traditions 
 have amply justified themselves, and the important point for en- 
 tering students to understand is the opportunity for intellectual 
 expansion which lies before them. The magic of pure speculation 
 is something which even a boy, if rightly handled, can distinctly 
 feel. From signifying preparation for life in a very general way, 
 the college has too often, in the minds of educators, come to mean 
 life itself, in the conventional sense. This it legitimately is not. 
 What have the problems of pure mathematics to do with ''real 
 life"? Yet it would be a pity if mathematicians, sensitive over 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 85 
 
 the clamorings of efficiency sharpers, should entirely forego their 
 labors on infinity for nearer examples drawn from our everlasting 
 shops and factories. 
 
 In some way the freshman must be made to think of college 
 not only as a preparation for life, but also as being much detached 
 from life. Properly used, college should be analogous to a jour- 
 ney to Europe taken for the purpose of better understanding 
 America. Conditions in the two spheres greatly differ, but nei- 
 ther distorts eternal values. The point could be the more easily 
 enforced because of the attitude in which even the freshman ordi- 
 narily presents himself. Emancipated for the moment he really 
 is, as he imagines, and in a sense is free to shape the world unto his 
 desire. The trust which at the outset many a boy places in the 
 efficacy of thought as taught by his masters is pathetic when con- 
 trasted with the little that is done to foster it. In this country 
 this disillusioning comes much sooner than in Europe. Take men 
 fresh from Oxford. Almost invariably they show great self- 
 assurance in applying their book-learning to life. Amusing they 
 may appear to hardened worldlings, yet they testify to a whole- 
 some state of instruction. From reading the accepted authorities 
 and from discussing these as though they were still matters of 
 live importance, they emerge with the " jump," as they suppose, 
 on their less educated fellows. And it is indeed significant that 
 Oxford, which in so many ways stands aloof from the world of 
 the immediate present, yet contrives to prepare her sons almost 
 at once to undertake pressing duties of the realm. Oxford men 
 pride themselves upon having dwelt while at college in regions 
 somewhat magical. It would be well if this magical element in 
 college education were not neglected by presidents and deans at 
 opening time. This it is, we fancy, which a rightminded fresh- 
 man vaguely feels, and calls freedom; the pity is that too often 
 he is not encouraged to convert his yearnings into a freedom of the 
 noblest sort. 
 
86 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 AMERICANISM * 
 BY HARTLEY B. ALEXANDER 
 
 Four great historical documents, marking progressive epochs 
 in our national history, give the essential definition of American- 
 ism in politics. First is the Declaration of Independence, signed 
 July 4, 1776, proclaiming the principles by which the United 
 States justify their independence of European domination. Sec- 
 ond is President Monroe's message to Congress, of December 2, 
 1823, announcing the right of the peoples of the western hemi- 
 sphere to pursue their political destinies without interference 
 from Old World powers. Third is Lincoln's memorial address at 
 Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, in which the rights of Americans 
 to their own continents are affirmed to be inalienably democrati- 
 cal, and without democracy to be forfeit. Fourth is the message 
 delivered by President Wilson at the joint session of the two 
 Houses of Congress, April 2, 1917, asserting the value of the dem- 
 ocratical polity to the whole territorial world and the right to it 
 of the entire human race. 
 
 These documents are not themselves causes of political conduct 
 in any primary sense. Rather, each is a summary of contempo- 
 rary political conviction from which fact arises the height of 
 their significance as expression of the political faith of America. 
 It is certainly true that this faith has been clarified and invigo- 
 rated by the fine intelligence of the expression; for more than to 
 any other form of state, public intelligence is necessary to de- 
 mocracy. Nevertheless, as in every other form of state, the final 
 sanction of government is the faith of the citizen; which is the im- 
 pulse for that conduct whereof, in democracies, intelligence alone 
 can set the pattern. The patterns of Americanism are its public 
 utterances, with the four that have been mentioned in the stations 
 of preeminence. 
 
 Out of each of these documents may be chosen phrases which 
 
 1 Reprinted through the kind permission of the author and of the 
 publishers of the New Republic. 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 87 
 
 serve as texts of their fuller meaning. "All men are created equal 
 . . . unalienable rights . . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness " : this is the core of the Declaration of Independence, voicing 
 in eighteenth century speech that belief of democrats in men's 
 right to the self-responsible making of their own laws which is fun- 
 damental in our polity. It is true that this formal meaning of the 
 pronouncement has received many material alterations in the 
 course of a century of history (though none, certainly, that 
 weaken the strength of the form) ; and among them, not the least, 
 a vast extension of the meaning of " all men" and a profound com- 
 plexification of the doctrine of "rights." The men who signed 
 the Declaration, though their minds were broad with the morning, 
 were yet but conscious rebels. What they felt was less the 
 tyranny of the Old World than the independence of the New, 
 and what they demanded was the right of free experimentation 
 in lands unspoiled. The true foundation of the rights of man as 
 they knew them was their own self-confidence in their own politi- 
 cal sagacity. The beginning of American liberty was the com- 
 manding acceptance of responsibility. 
 
 The Declaration proclaimed America's right to try out democ- 
 racy; the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed both the success of the ex- 
 periment and the belligerent intention to broaden its territorial 
 marches. " The American continents, by the free and independent 
 condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth 
 not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any 
 European powers." The italicized phrase is the important one: 
 it proclaims again the acceptance of responsibility, no longer 
 for experiment, but for huge expansion. The Monroe Doctrine, 
 in effect, established a greater Mason and Dixon's line, having the 
 natural seas for its delineations. Unless history shall show 
 greater consequences from President Wilson's War Message, it is 
 the most ambitious political proclamation ever made effective. 
 In its own consciousness the United States was no longer, as de 
 Tocqueville and other sympathetic Europeans regarded it, 
 merely an unexpected fruitful trial of precarious political theory; 
 it was now confident and aggressive, with ambitions outpassing 
 
88 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 the grandiosities of emperors and incidentally and immedi- 
 ately, defying emperors and their ambitions; for the direct occa- 
 sion of Monroe's message was the threat of the Holy Alliance for 
 the re-subjection of South America and the Russian threat of 
 expansion in North America. 
 
 The truly arrogant pretentiousness of the Monroe Doctrine is 
 best realized when we contrast the sparseness of the human popu- 
 lation in the western hemisphere with the relatively crowded con- 
 dition of the eastern: virtually, since the democratic faith was but 
 meagerly represented in the Old World at that time, it was a de- 
 mand from an insignificant minority among men that they be 
 possessed of a third of the world. Certainly, such a demand could 
 never have received any general recognition had it not been 
 coupled with a free invitation to all European peoples to colonize 
 America in every sense save the political; the convincing corollary 
 to the Monroe Doctrine was the open door to immigrants. It 
 may be remarked that the situation is not greatly changed to-day. 
 The Americas are still the most sparsely populated of the great 
 habitable areas of our globe; the Monroe Doctrine is still in force. 
 But the test of its strength is to come not from Europe but from 
 Asia. The real issue, before Americans and Europeans alike, is 
 now whether, in the interests of political independence, the west- 
 ern hemisphere must not, and in fairness, open the doors of immi- 
 gration to the Oriental. Can the Caucasian west preempt this 
 virginal domain to the lasting exclusion of the congested east? 
 What is the meaning of "all men" in our Declaration? 
 
 Lincoln's Gettysburg Address represents cognizance of the 
 same fundamental problem from the angle of internal organiza- 
 tion; it is, as it were, the conscious self-measurement of the New 
 World polity in the glass of its own ideals. The speech looks 
 back to the nation's beginnings, and, in a sense, it is a final re- 
 affirmation of what Monroe had before affirmed: that the experi- 
 mental stage of American democracy was passed, and that 
 thenceforth, bulwarked by America, "government of the people, 
 for the people, and by the people" should not perish from the 
 earth. It affirmed this, not in view of external threat, but in the 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 89 
 
 presence of internal; in effect stating that America could not tol- 
 erate from any group of its own people the formation and perpet- 
 uation of an oligarchical or other form of anti-democratical state, 
 that democracy alone should be free to develop in the western 
 hemisphere, for the very reason that democracy is imperiled by 
 non-democratical neighbors. The address was, in short, an 
 apostolic profession that democracy is convinced of its own right- 
 eousness, and is intolerant of all dangerous rivals. 
 
 Supporting this profession there was a profounder meaning 
 than the ostensible one of territorial union and political unity. 
 The meaning of "all men" still called for definition, and Lincoln 
 could not use the word " people" in any cant sense. He had long 
 before proclaimed that the nation could not endure half slave and 
 half free; he well knew that the crux of the war was the slave 
 question; and no man could have been wiselier conscious than he 
 of the fact that the settlement of that question for freedom must 
 mean ultimately a redefinition of "people" and a new conception 
 of American citizenship. The United States had liberally wel- 
 comed Europeans of many tongues and complexions, who should 
 be the making of its people; now it was ready to take into the 
 body politic millions of that race which is most antipodal to the 
 European. The enfranchisement of the American blacks is the 
 most heroic act of political faith in history. True, the problem 
 of readjustment has none of the simplicity which the idealists of 
 that time dreamed it to have; it is a problem that now is and will 
 long continue with us. But the faith that was in the Declaration 
 and that forms the heart of Americanism to-day, faith in the civic 
 nobility and therefore in the civic rights of all nature which we 
 can call human, received in the enfranchisement of the Negroes 
 its extreme attestation. From that time forward Americans 
 could face the world, conscious that they had made themselves 
 clean with their first profession. Race questions and class ques- 
 tions as distinguished from questions of formal politics will 
 long continue to vex us, and eventually the Mongol problem will 
 be huger than the Negro; but by implication all of these were 
 settled, and not only for us, but for all democratical peoples, when 
 
90 SUMMARY SENTENCES 
 
 our Civil War came to its issue. The civic man is henceforth of 
 no preferred complexion and of no recognized caste at least, 
 this is now a fixed article in our American faith in a "government 
 of the people": Americanism cannot be for "all men" in any 
 lesser sense than for "men of all kindreds." 
 
 The Revolutionary War established the privilege of democracy 
 in the New World. A mature generation later that privilege was 
 converted into an aggressive right, balking the ambitious preten- 
 sions of the Caesars of that day in respect to the two western con- 
 tinents. Another generation matured, and the Civil War marked 
 the purification of democracy in its own house, and a final clear- 
 conscious recognition of the uttermost intention of the term de- 
 mocracy. Now a third generation has matured and passed, and 
 in a war outmeasuring all those that men have fought the United 
 States is called once more, not only to stand for its political faith, 
 but to expand the meaning of that faith. The stand and the ex- 
 pansion have both been made, and (true to the genius of his 
 nation) the President has given their meaning in a penetrating 
 phrase. "The world must be made safe for democracy; its peace 
 must be planted upon tested foundations of political liberty." 
 The World ! Here, indeed, is expansion; our globe has shrunk too 
 small for democratic and autocratic states to subsist together, nor 
 can Ocean herself constrain them in separation. Democracy has 
 issued her final defiance to all the citadels of absolutism, proclaim- 
 ing no longer her right to independence, nor merely her right to 
 her own free field, but now her purposed supremacy in all fields 
 and over all politics. Here is arrogance of pretension out-match- 
 ing Monroe's, whose broad-limned compromise breaks futile, like 
 the old compromises of North and South. Democracy is now 
 claiming for herself no lesser thing than the world. 
 
 The new declaration is fittingly accompanied by a reaffirmation 
 of the old. The "tested foundations of political liberty" refer us 
 once again to the trial which our national history has given to our 
 national faith, proudly asserting that we have passed the trial 
 with triumph, and that the high self-confidence of the authors of 
 the Declaration has been justified to their sons's sons. But more 
 
EXERCISES IN SUMMARY SENTENCES 91 
 
 than this, the new declaration, like those which have preceded it, 
 adds new meaning to the whole national faith. Our fight, said 
 the President, is for the liberation of the world's peoples, "the 
 German people included," therein asserting the right of democ- 
 racy to a kind of spiritual colonization, even in antagonistic lands. 
 The assertion of such a right, unless it were the deepest of convic- 
 tions, could only be the most incredible effrontery; and if convic- 
 tion, it can have for its meaning naught save a new definition of 
 "all men." Henceforth, the word "people" must include not 
 merely men of all external complexions, but men of all internal 
 complexions, not merely men of all classes, but men of all polities 
 and for the reason that there is but one true form of the truly 
 human polity, and that is the democratical form. The faith that 
 underlies such an assumption is prodigious; and it is in that faith 
 that we are fighting, for it is the core of Americanism. Fighting, 
 and at the same time watching and listening with an eager and 
 amazing confidence for the first signs of response from the German 
 people; for the President spoke only what all Americans in their 
 hearts believe, when he said that our war is with institutions and 
 not people. 
 
 Americanism has received its definition in four great docu- 
 ments. Three of these have been issued upon the occasion of 
 great wars, and the fourth, for near a century, has been as dis- 
 tinctly belligerent in character as the mailed fist or the jangling 
 sabre. Americanism is, obviously, no pacifist faith. But it is, 
 none the less, a faith. It is a faith vast in its pretensions beyond 
 all dreams of autocrats; and it is a faith, despite its century of 
 trial, little justified by what has transpired in human history. 
 Yet in the face of autocrats and of history, it is inwardly unshaken 
 and serene, religious in its confidence, miraculous in its hopes. Its 
 foundation is something more constraining than experience and 
 far more compelling than reason; for its foundation is an inner 
 light, which for us is like a revelation, showing as in an apocalypse 
 the common humanity of "all men." Americanism is a faith 
 that men have died for, and that men are dying for to-day 
 whether it be a madness or divinity that hath touched them 
 with it. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 1. Abbreviations. Avoid all abbreviations in formal 
 writing, with these exceptions: 
 
 a. Such common abbreviations as Mr., Mrs., A.D., 
 i.e., and etc.; and 
 
 b. Such abbreviations as A.M., P.M., Dr., and No. 
 when used with other words. 
 
 Absolute Phrases. See 22. 
 
 2. Adjective for Adverb. Do not use an adjective where 
 the construction calls for an adverb. 
 
 Wrong: It is said that he talks too rapid. 
 Right: It is said that he talks too rapidly. 
 
 What is the difference between: 
 
 He nailed it firm, and He nailed it firmly ? 
 
 3. Agreement of Subject and Verb. A verb should agree 
 in number with its subject. The following cases re- 
 quire study: 
 
 a. A singular subject + plural modifier + verb. 
 
 Wrong: A list of many things have been drawn up. 
 Right: A list of many things has been drawn up. 
 
 b. Each, every, any one, etc., require singular verbs. 
 
 Wrong: Each of the men were eager for the fight. 
 Right: Each of the men was eager for the fight. 
 
 c. Two or more subjects joined by or or nor do not 
 form a plural subject. The verb agrees with the 
 nearest subject. 
 
APPOSITIVES 93 
 
 Wrong: Neither the man nor his wife are at home. 
 Right: Neither the man nor his wife is at home. 
 
 d. The number of the subject is not altered by the 
 addition of with, together with, as well as, etc., to 
 the subject. 
 
 Wrong: I, as well as my brother, are coming. 
 Right: I, as well as my brother, am coming. 
 
 4. Ambiguity. See pp. 56-58, 61-65. 
 
 5. "And Which." "And which" and "but which" 
 should be used only to connect two parallel relative 
 clauses. 
 
 Wrong: We live in a large house, and which was built 
 
 many years ago. 
 
 Right: We live in a large house which is very old 
 and which was built many years ago. 
 
 6. Apostrophe. Some of the most common uses of the 
 apostrophe are as follows: 
 
 a. To indicate possession: 
 
 Examples: The boy's books; a boys 9 school. 
 
 Note: The pronouns form their possessive simply 
 by adding s : Examples: hers, yours, his, its. 
 
 b. To show that a letter has been omitted: 
 
 Example: Its, the possessive of it, should not be con- 
 fused with it's, the contraction for it is. 
 
 c. To form the plurals of letters and figures. 
 
 Examples: There are two a's in separate. Don't 
 write your 3 's so that they will look like 
 5 's. 
 
 Note: The apostrophe must not be used to form 
 the plural of nouns. 
 
 Appositives, Punctuation of. See 13. 
 
94 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 7. Capitalization. Study carefully the following rules 
 for capitalization: 
 
 a. Do not capitalize a word unless you have a good 
 reason for doing so. 
 
 b. The first word of a direct quotation begins with 
 a capital. 
 
 Example: He said, "When do you graduate?" 
 
 c. The first word of every sentence, query, formal 
 resolution or salutation begins with a capital. 
 
 Examples: Resolved, That the Government should 
 own and operate the railroads of this 
 country. 
 
 To all men who read this notice, Be it 
 known, etc. 
 
 d. All words referring to God, Jesus, and the Bible 
 are usually capitalized. 
 
 e. Important words in literary titles should be 
 capitalized. 
 
 Example: Have you read The Way of the World ? 
 
 /. All proper nouns and adjectives should be 
 capitalized. 
 
 Examples: I shall arrive at the Park Street Station 
 the first Tuesday in May and shall 
 spend the summer with you. (Note 
 that the names of the seasons are not 
 capitalized.) 
 
 London is the capital of the British Em- 
 pire, which includes many countries 
 both in the East and in the West. 
 
 The Democratic party, which is very strong 
 in the South, elected President Wilson. 
 
CASE 95 
 
 Note: (i) that east, west, etc., are not capitalized 
 unless they refer to social, economic, or political 
 divisions of a country; (2) that names of subjects 
 taught in school or college are not capitalized un- 
 less they are covered by rule/; (3) that such com- 
 mon nouns as professor, uncle, street, high school, 
 and college are not capitalized unless they are used 
 with a particular person or thing: 
 
 Example: Before I entered Columbia University I had 
 never personally known a college professor. 
 
 8. Case. 
 
 a. The possessive case of nouns is formed by adding 
 's or the simple apostrophe. Thus, John's, boy's, 
 boys', Dickens', Dickens's. Except in a few 
 common expressions such as "a day's journey," 
 
 "for pity's sake," do not use the possessive case 
 of nouns denoting inanimate things; use the 
 preposition of. 
 
 The possessive case of pronouns is never 
 formed with the apostrophe: its, hers, theirs, his, 
 ours. Note the difference between its and it's. 
 
 b. Avoid using the nominative case of a pronoun as 
 the object of a preposition: 
 
 Wrong: A crowd of we boys went on a hunting trip. 
 Right: A crowd of us boys went on a hunting trip. 
 
 Wrong: It is a secret between you and /. 
 Right: It is a secret between you and me. 
 
 c. Do not use the objective case of a pronoun as a 
 subjective complement: 
 
 Wrong: It is me (him, her, them). 
 Right: It is / (he, she, they}. 
 
96 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 d. Distinguish carefully between who, whoever 
 (nominatives) and whom, whomever (objectives): 
 
 Wrong: Who did you see this morning? 
 
 Right: Whom did you see this morning? 
 Wrong: Show the paper to whomever asks about it. 
 Right: Show the paper to whoever asks about it. (Who- 
 ever is the subject of asks, not the object of to.) 
 Wrong: The friend whom I thought was coming dis- 
 appointed me. 
 
 Right: The friend who I thought was coming disap- 
 pointed me. 
 
 (Who is the subject of was coming, not the object of 
 thought, which is parenthetical.) 
 
 e. After the conjunctions than and as in elliptical 
 clauses of comparison use the nominative case: 
 
 Wrong: He is more active than me. 
 
 Right: He is more active than / (am). 
 Wrong: I am not so active as him. 
 
 Right: I am not so active as he (is). (See like and as, 
 p. 14.) 
 
 Choppy Sentences. See 45. 
 9. Clearness. See 24, 49, and pp. 57-58, 61-65. 
 
 10. Climax. See p. 48. 
 
 11. Coherence. Coherence in sentences demands that 
 the writer should make instantly clear the relation of 
 the parts of the sentence to each other. See pp. 37- 
 40, 6 1-68, and Modifiers, Reference, Agreement, Num- 
 ber, Dangling Elliptical Clause, Dangling Gerund, 
 Dangling Participle, Conjunctions, Parallelism, Point 
 of View, and Omissions. 
 
 Colloquialisms. See 36. 
 
COMMA WITH DIRECT QUOTATIONS 97 
 
 12. Colon. See pp. 22-23. 
 
 Comma to set off Absolute Phrases. See 22. 
 
 13. Comma to set off Appositives. An appositive, with 
 or without or, such as, as, or other introductory word, 
 should be set off by a comma from the noun it 
 modifies. 
 
 Right: Any baggage, such as trunks, must be left at home. 
 When the appositive forms a part of a name or 
 is quoted, it should not be set off. 
 
 Right: Alfred the Great died in 901. 
 Right: Avoid the word enthuse and the expression " Get 
 my goat." 
 
 14. Comma in Compound Sentences. Use a comma be- 
 tween the clauses of a compound sentence that are 
 connected by a simple conjunction such as but, and, 
 nor, or, yet. When the clauses are not so joined, use 
 a semicolon. See pp. 1617, 21-22. 
 
 15. Comma after Dependent Clause. When the de- 
 pendent clause precedes the main clause, the depend- 
 ent clause should be set off by a comma. 
 
 Example: When he comes, I shall be glad to see him. 
 See also p. 18. 
 
 When the dependent clause follows the main clause, 
 the comma is necessary only when the dependent 
 clause is non-restrictive. 
 
 16. Comma to set off Words in Direct Address. Words 
 used in direct address vocatives are set off by 
 commas from the rest of the sentence: 
 
 You are not going, Paul, are you? 
 Paul, you are not going, are you ? 
 
 Comma with Direct Quotations, See 35. 
 
98 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 17. Comma Fault. See pp. 8-9. 
 
 18. Comma before For. See p. 18. 
 Comma-ior-Period. See 17. 
 
 19. Comma with Geographical Expressions and Dates. 
 
 Names of places and dates used to explain a pre- 
 ceding name or date are, or course, parenthetical, and 
 should be set off by commas: 
 
 I arrived in Atlanta, Ga., on July 14, 1916, at seven 
 
 o'clock in the evening. 
 He lives at No. 367 West Avenue, (Ave., Street, or St.,) 
 
 Chicago, 111. 
 Last summer we visited both Portland, Oregon, (Ore.,) 
 
 and Portland, Maine. 
 
 Comma with Interjections. See 22. 
 
 Comma to set off Introductory Expressions. See 22. 
 
 20. Comma to set off Non-Restrictive Modifiers. Use 
 
 commas to set off non-restrictive phrases and clauses. 
 
 President White, who has just returned to the city, 
 gave an interview to the reporters this morning. 
 
 Montenegro, situated as she is, must cultivate friendly 
 relations with her neighbors. 
 
 For the distinction between restrictive and non- 
 restrictive modifiers, see 62. 
 
 21. Comma to mark Omissions. The comma is used to 
 mark the omission of an important word. For 
 example: 
 
 Shakspere was a self-trained writer; Marlowe, a uni- 
 versity product. 
 
 22. Comma to mark Parenthetical Expressions. Com- 
 mas are used to separate from the rest of the sentence 
 any parenthetical expressions,, that is, expressions, in.- 
 
COMMA BETWEEN MEMBERS IN A SERIES 99 
 
 sorted by way of comment or explanation in a sen- 
 tence that would be grammatically complete without 
 the inserted expression (interjections, appositives, 
 absolute phrases, introductory words, titles used with 
 a proper name, non-restrictive modifiers, etc.). 
 For examples and further discussion, see p. 19. 
 
 23. Comma to set off Participial Phrases. Participial 
 phrases which are not essential to the continuity of 
 the thought or construction in the sentence should be 
 set off by commas: 
 
 Being unfamiliar with the road, I decided to stop at 
 
 the nearest inn. 
 My friend, being unfamiliar with the road, decided to 
 
 stop at the nearest inn. 
 He jumped upon a loose rock on the edge of the cliff, 
 
 thereby causing a disastrous landslide. 
 
 See also 22. 
 
 24. Comma to Prevent Misreading. See pp. 17-18. 
 Comma with Quotations. See 35. 
 
 25. Comma between Members in a Series. 
 
 a. When consecutive adjectives, nouns, phrases, 
 etc. used in the same construction (coordinately) 
 are not joined by a conjunction, the members of 
 the series should be separated by commas. 
 
 Examples: 
 
 He was a tall, sallow, gaunt man. 
 
 He spoke with energy, with gusto, with charm. 
 
 b. When such members are joined by a conjunc- 
 tion, the use of the comma is generally held to 
 be optional, unless clearness calls for it. 
 
 Examples: 
 
 Right: He was a tall, sallow, and gaunt man. 
 4ko right: He was a tall, sallow and gaunt 
 
100 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 Comma with Titles. See 22. 
 
 26. Comma, Unnecessary. Avoid the use of unnecessary 
 commas: 
 
 Wrong: He said, that he would come. 
 I do not see, how he does it. 
 On the table, is a large vase. 
 I have been reading, poems, plays, and novels. 
 The hill was covered with trees, and rocks. 
 Right: He said that he would come. 
 I do not see how he does it. 
 On the table is a large vase. 
 I have been reading poems, plays, and novels. 
 The hill was covered with trees and rocks. 
 
 When in doubt as to the use of a comma, remember 
 that it is a far more serious error to use a comma that 
 cannot be defended than to omit a comma where one 
 should be used. 
 
 27. Compound Sentences, Stringy. Avoid rambling 
 compound sentences crudely joined by a string of 
 and's or but's. 
 
 I hunted all day and did my best, but killed only two 
 birds, and then returned home, but I was happy and 
 contented. 
 
 To revise a sentence of this type, subordinate all 
 subordinate ideas and if necessary divide the long 
 sentence into shorter sentences. See also 31. 
 
 28. Conjunctions. See pp. 12-15. 
 
 29. Conjunctive Adverbs, Semicolon before. See pp. 13 
 and 21. 
 
 30. Connectives. See pp. 32-33. 
 
PARAGRAPHING OF DIALOGUE W 
 
 Consecutive Adjectives or Nouns, Punctuation of. 
 See 25 and p. 7. 
 
 31. Coordination, Excessive or Illogical. 
 
 Avoid excessive coordination by subordinating all 
 subordinate ideas in the sentence: 
 
 Bad: It was a cool afternoon and we had a fast game. 
 Better: Since it was a cool afternoon, we had a fast game. 
 
 Avoid illogical and obscure coordination: 
 
 Illogical: He is here, and he is not going to deliver his 
 
 address. 
 Logical: He is here, but he is not going to deliver his 
 
 address. 
 Not clear: He was very fond of playing baseball, and 
 
 left home at once. 
 
 Clear: He was very fond of playing baseball, and, since 
 he wanted to join one of the major leagues, 
 he left home at once. 
 
 See also pp. 27-33. 
 
 32. Dangling Elliptical Clause, Gerund, or Participle. 
 
 See pp. 61-62. 
 
 33. Dash. The dash is used chiefly to indicate a more or 
 less abrupt break in the thought of a sentence. A too 
 frequent use of the dash as a substitute for the period 
 or the comma results in an hysterical style. 
 
 Dates, Punctuation of. See 19. 
 
 34. Dialogue, Paragraphing of. In dialogue, every 
 speech, regardless of its length, should be put into a 
 separate paragraph. The explanatory words of in- 
 troduction or comment should be put in the para- 
 graph with the speech. 
 
102 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 35. Dialogue, Punctuation of. Follow these models in 
 punctuating dialogue. (Note especially the use of 
 the comma to separate such expressions as "He said" 
 from the direct quotation.) 
 
 a. He said, "I see that you have an engagement." 
 
 b. ' I see," he said, " that you have an engagement." 
 
 c. "I see that you have an engagement," he said. 
 
 d. "I see that you have an engagement," he said. 
 "I'll call again." 
 
 e. "Have you an engagement?" he said. 
 /. He said, "Have you an engagement?" 
 g. Did he say, "I have an engagement"? 
 
 36. Diction. Diction is the choice of words for the ex- 
 pression of ideas. Diction is concerned, therefore, 
 with the choice of those words which will most clearly 
 and forcibly express our ideas. To secure the most 
 effective expression of his ideas the student should 
 bear in mind the following cautions: 
 
 a. Avoid foreign words by using English equiva- 
 lents. 
 
 b. Avoid such provincialisms and vulgarisms as in 
 back of for behind; pack for carry; reckon for 
 think; ain't for is not, am not, has not; wait on for 
 wait for; some for somewhat. 
 
 c. Avoid colloquialisms in formal writing. Many 
 expressions permissible in informal speech or 
 writing become objectionable when used in well- 
 considered discourse. 
 
 Examples : Mad for angry ; funny for strange, queer ; 
 don't for do not. 
 
 d. Avoid the confusion of words of similar meaning 
 or of similar sound, such as : accept, except; affect^ 
 
DOUBLE NEGATIVE 103 
 
 effect; can, may; fewer, less; lie, lay; sit, set; old, 
 aged, elderly. 
 
 t. Avoid the use of hackneyed and trite expressions, 
 such as waves mountain high, pearly teeth, rosy 
 cheeks, murmuring brooks, happy as a lark, the 
 wee small hours. 
 
 f. Avoid inappropriateness in words. Use words 
 that have an association suitable to the idea they 
 are intended to convey. What is the difference 
 in the suggestive power of horse, steed, nag, plug, 
 jar-head, courser, palfrey, and equine ? 
 
 See also Improvement of the Words, pp. 46-47. 
 
 g. Avoid slang. Slang perhaps has its place in 
 speech, but that place is obviously not formal 
 speech or writing. 
 
 h. Avoid expressions that violate English idiom, 
 that is, expressions that do not conform to the 
 peculiarly English mode of phraseology. Using 
 the wrong preposition with certain verbs, nouns, 
 and adjectives is the most common form of unidi- 
 omatic English. For example: 
 
 I cannot comply to this request 
 violates the well-established idiom comply with. 
 
 Note the difference in meaning between: 
 charge with, charge to; change with, change to, 
 change for; consist in, consist of. 
 
 What preposition should follow different, pre- 
 fer, averse, share, dependent, independent? 
 
 Direct Address. See 16. 
 37. Double Negative. Avoid the double negative. 
 
 Wrong: I haven't seen no books. 
 
 I can't hardly come to the meeting to-night. 
 I cannot watch but one ball at a time. 
 
104 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 Right: I have seen no books. I haven't seen any books. 
 I can hardly come to the meeting to-night. 
 I can watch but ( = only) one ball at a time. 
 
 Each, every, etc. with Plural Verbs. See 3. 
 
 38. Economy. See pp. 56-58. 
 Ellipsis, Improper. See 49. 
 
 39. Emphasis. See pp. 45-52. 
 
 40. Euphony. Avoid an unmusical combination of 
 sounds; for example: 
 
 The following fall our teacher told us to eschew 
 words that are " difficultly pronounceable." 
 
 Excessive Use of Comma. See 26. 
 
 For, Punctuation before. See 18. 
 
 Geographical Expressions, Comma with. See 19. 
 
 41. Hyphen, Uses of. The hyphen is used as follows: 
 
 a. To indicate the division of a word at the end of a 
 line (but never at the beginning). 
 
 b. To join the members of compound words, such 
 as twenty-four, father-in-law, so-called. 
 
 Note: The hyphen should not be used to sepa- 
 rate the syllables of such uncompounded words 
 as together, already, all right, unless these words 
 are divided at the end of a line. 
 
 Wrong: We came to-gether. He has al-ready 
 arrived. Everything is now all-right. 
 
 Monosyllables should never be divided. See 72. 
 
 Idiom. See 36. 
 
 Incomplete Sentence. See 54. 
 
 Interjections, Punctuation of. See 22. 
 
 Introductory Expressions, Punctuation of. See 22. 
 
MODIFIERS MISPLACED 105 
 
 42. Italics, Uses of. (Note: Underscore once to indicate 
 italics.) Italics are most frequently used in the fol- 
 lowing cases: 
 
 a. To mark foreign words which have not yet be- 
 come naturalized in the language. 
 
 Exam-pie: This is an example of the argument ad 
 hominem. 
 
 b. To refer to a word or a letter as such: 
 
 Example: Care should be taken to distinguish be- 
 tween accept and except, between ac and ex. 
 
 c. To emphasize a word. See p. 46. 
 
 d. To indicate names of books, dramas, newspapers, 
 and magazines. 
 
 Examples: I have been reading the Outlook, Bar- 
 busse's Under Fire, and the Christian 
 Science Monitor. 
 
 The name of the author, of course, should not 
 be italicized. See also Quotation Marks. 
 
 e. Names of ships are italicized: 
 
 Example: The New Mexico is one of the finest dread- 
 noughts in the American Navy. 
 
 43. Like for As. See page 14. 
 
 Misreading Prevented by Comma. See 24. 
 
 44. Modifiers Misplaced. So place every modifier that 
 the reader may connect it at once with the word it 
 modifies. 
 
 Not Clear: He said that if we did not pay, within a week, 
 in spite of all our protests, he would present 
 the note at his bank. 
 
106 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 Clear: He said that if we did not pay within a week, 
 he would present, in spite of all our pro- 
 tests, the note at his bank. 
 Wrong: Lost: a dog by an old man with a brass collar 
 
 around his neck. 
 
 Right: Lost: by an old man a dog with a brass collar 
 around his neck. 
 
 Take especial pains to place the adverbs only, just., 
 almost, and ever next to the words they modify. 
 
 Ambiguous: He only hesitated a few minutes. 
 Clear: He hesitated only a few minutes. 
 
 45. Monotonous Sentence Structure. Avoid the monot- 
 onous repetition of sentences similar in construction 
 and length. 
 
 Monotonous: I was standing on the bank of a small river. 
 I was looking toward a grass-covered hill. I 
 could see an old colonial mansion on this 
 hill. I noticed eight large columns that 
 supported a beautifully decorated roof, and 
 on either side of the house I could see sev- 
 eral rows of giant oaks. 
 
 Better: Standing on the bank of a small river, I could 
 see an old colonial mansion situated on a 
 grass-covered hill opposite me. Eight large 
 columns supported a beautifully decorated 
 roof. In front of these, on either side of the 
 house, stood several rows of giant oaks. 
 
 46. Namely, That /s 5 Punctuation of. 
 
 These expressions should be preceded by a 
 semicolon (or, in the case of an appositive, a 
 comma or colon,) and followed by a comma. 
 
 See also 63. 
 
REPRESENTATION OF NUMBERS 107 
 
 47. Number. 
 
 a. Pronouns. 
 
 A pronoun should agree in number with its 
 antecedent: 
 
 Wrong: Every student brought their books. 
 Right: Every student brought his books. 
 
 Avoid the use of a plural pronominal adjective 
 with such singular nouns as kind and sort. 
 Wrong: I do not enjoy reading those kind of novel. 
 Right: I do not enjoy reading that kind of novel. 
 
 In the sentence 
 
 One of the most interesting plays that has ever 
 been given in our theatre is Shaw's Pyg- 
 malion. 
 
 the antecedent of that is plays, not one. The 
 verb should therefore be have. 
 
 b. Nouns. 
 
 Do not use the apostrophe to form the plural 
 of nouns. 
 
 c. Verbs. See Agreement of Subject and Verb. 
 
 48. Numbers, Representation of. 
 
 a. Do not spell out the numbers in dates, hours 
 (when A.M. or P.M. is used), pages or sections 
 of books, or room or street numbers. 
 
 Right: He took office on July 7, 1916, at 1788 Jackson 
 
 Avenue. 
 Look on page 34 of your textbook. 
 
 b. Other numbers should be spelled out if they can 
 be written in one or two words. 
 
 Right: Nineteen hundred men, forty-six men, one 
 thousand men. 
 
108 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 c. Do not begin a sentence with figures. 
 
 Inadvisable: 63 5 men from our college entered the army. 
 Right: Six hundred and thirty-five men from our 
 college entered the army. 
 
 d. Except in cases where extreme accuracy is de- 
 sired do not repeat a number in parenthesized 
 figures. 
 
 Undesirable: We killed ten (10) birds and two (2) 
 
 rabbits. 
 Right: We killed ten birds and two rabbits. 
 
 e. As a rule, be consistent in the method used for 
 representing a series of numbers. 
 
 Undesirable: In our library there are 3000 unbound 
 pamphlets, forty thousand bound vol- 
 umes, 1,400 bound magazines, and ten 
 thousand unclassified volumes. 
 
 Right: (Either figures or words throughout the sen- 
 tence.) 
 
 Omissions, Marked by Comma. See 21. 
 
 49. Omissions, Incorrect. Avoid the following com- 
 mon types of incorrect omissions: 
 
 a. The omission of part of a verb phrase. 
 
 Wrong: I always have A and always will take an 
 
 interest in painting. 
 
 Right: I always have taken and always will take an 
 interest in painting. 
 
 b. The omission of a copula when the verb be is 
 used both as a principal and as an auxiliary verb. 
 
 Wrong: The new country club is very pretty and A 
 
 praised by everybody. 
 
 Right: The new country club is very pretty and is 
 praised by everybody. 
 
OVERLAPPING DEPENDENCE 109 
 
 c. The omission of an article, pronoun, preposition, 
 or conjunction necessary to the accurate expres- 
 sion of the thought of a sentence. 
 
 What effect would the omission of the itali- 
 cized words have upon the following sentences ? 
 
 Last night my l^arn and my garage caught fire. 
 He carried a red and a black flag. 
 I went with my friend and my brother. 
 He tried to interest those who could swim or sail 
 and to play games with the others. 
 
 d. The omission of than or as in a double compari- 
 son. 
 
 Wrong: I am as tall, if not taller, than my brother. 
 Right but Awkward: I am as tall as, if not taller 
 
 than, my brother. 
 Permissible: I am as tall as my brother, if not taller. 
 
 e. The omission of the standard of comparison. 
 
 Vague: We have learned to appreciate the greater 
 adaptability of the American soldier. 
 
 Clear: We have learned to appreciate the greater 
 adaptability of the American soldier as 
 compared to the German. 
 
 50. Order of Words. See pp. 48-52. 
 
 51. Overlapping Dependence. Rewrite a sentence that 
 contains a series of similar clauses in an overlapping 
 construction. 
 
 Bad: He dropped out of college, for his father needed 
 him to help in his business, for it had been 
 seriously injured by the war. 
 
 Better: He dropped out of college, for his father needed 
 him to help in his business, which had been 
 seriously injured by the war. 
 
110 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 A series of overlapping for, which, and (so) that 
 clauses is especially to be avoided. 
 
 52. Parallelism. See pp. 37-40. 
 
 Parenthetical Expressions, Punctuation of. See 22. 
 Participial Phrases, Punctuation of. See 22. 
 
 53. Period, Uses of. 
 
 a. Use a period after every declarative sentence. 
 The slovenly omission of the period (or question 
 mark or exclamation point) is inexcusable. 
 
 b. Use a period after abbreviations: Ga., i.e., Mr., 
 LL.D. 
 
 54. Period Fault. See pp. 9-1 1 . 
 Period-ioT-Comma. See 54. 
 
 55. Point of View, Shifting. 
 
 a. Avoid shifting from active to passive or from 
 passive to active within the sentence. 
 
 Wrong: He came back to college in the fall, and all 
 his energies were exerted in making a 
 soldier of himself. 
 
 Right: He came back to college in the fall and ex- 
 erted all his energies in making a soldier of 
 himself. 
 
 See also pp. 63-64. 
 
 b. Avoid the unnecessary change of subject in the 
 clauses of a sentence. 
 
 Wrong: We went through a cotton mill, where the 
 
 operatives interested us greatly. 
 Right: We went through a cotton mill, where we 
 
 were greatly interested in the operatives. 
 See also pp. 6364. 
 
 c. Avoid shifting the tense from past to present or 
 
USES OF QUOTATION MARKS 111 
 
 from present to past in narration. Choose one 
 tense and use it throughout. See also pp. 64-65. 
 
 56. Possessive with Gerunds. As a rule, the noun or 
 pronoun modifying a gerund should be put in the 
 possessive case: 
 
 He slipped away without any one's seeing him. 
 
 The object of the preposition without in this sen- 
 tence is the gerund seeing. 
 Which is preferable: 
 
 I cannot conceive of him doing it? 
 or 
 
 I cannot conceive of his doing it? 
 
 With nouns or phrases with which it would be 
 awkward to use the possessive case it need not be 
 used. It would be awkward to use the possessive 
 in such a sentence as 
 
 I cannot conceive of Richard, who is my friend, 
 doing such a thing. 
 
 Precision. See 36. 
 Provincialisms. See 36. 
 
 57. Punctuation at the Beginning of a Line. Punctuation 
 marks should never be written at the beginning of 
 a line, except dashes, parentheses, and quotation 
 marks. 
 
 58. Quotation Marks, Uses of. 
 
 a. Every direct quotation should be inclosed by 
 quotation marks. 
 
 Example: He said, "I will come at once." 
 See also 35. 
 
112 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 b. A quotation within a quotation should be in- 
 closed by single quotation marks. 
 
 Example: The witness said, "I heard the defendant 
 say, 1 1 had no idea that my enemy was 
 in town that day.' " 
 
 c . A technical word or a word used in a special, un- 
 usual, ironical, or humorous way may sometimes 
 be inclosed by quotation marks. 
 
 Examples: The pilot gave orders to " luff round." 
 
 Oscar Wilde speaks of his hero's going 
 
 "Bunburying." 
 Cautions: 
 
 1. Do not insult your reader's intelligence by 
 labeling your humor or irony. 
 
 2. When slang or technical expressions are 
 used in a slang or technical context they 
 should not be inclosed by quotation marks. 
 
 d. Titles of short poems, short stories, pictures, and 
 subdivisions of books are generally inclosed by 
 quotation marks. Names of books, magazines, 
 and papers are ordinarily italicized. 
 Examples: "I Have a Rendezvous with Death," 
 
 "The Man Who Was," "The Angelus"; 
 The Scarlet Letter, the Saturday Evening 
 Post. 
 
 e. Never employ quotation marks without good 
 reason. 
 
 59. Reference^ Unexpressed or Vague. Avoid ambiguity 
 and obscurity by making the reference of every pro- 
 noun or adjective absolutely clear. 
 
 Vague: John told his father that he would soon be nomi- 
 nated. 
 
RELATIVE PRONOUNS 113 
 
 Undesirable: John told his father that he (John) would soon be 
 nominated. 
 
 Right: John told his father that he expected to be nomi- 
 nated soon. 
 
 Vague: He is guilty of carelessness in his work, which 
 has prevented him from holding a good posi- 
 tion. 
 
 Right: He is guilty of carelessness in his work, which 
 weakness has prevented him from holding a 
 good position. 
 
 Right: He is guilty of carelessness in his work. This 
 weakness has prevented him from holding a 
 good position. 
 
 See also 3, 47, and pp. 61-62. 
 60. Relative Pronouns. 
 
 a. The relative pronoun agrees in gender with its 
 antecedent. 
 
 1. Use who or that for persons, which for things. 
 
 Note : Which may refer to a group of per- 
 sons regarded as an impersonal unit, as in 
 
 The jury, which had just reached a decision, 
 now entered the room. 
 
 2. As a rule, do not use whose to refer to 
 
 things. 
 
 Undesirable: He very warmly praised the new 
 law, whose success had been re- 
 markable. 
 
 Better: He very warmly praised the new 
 law, the success of which had 
 been remarkable. 
 
 b. The relative pronoun agrees in person with its 
 antecedent: 
 
 It is I who am (not is) to blame. 
 
114 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 c. The case of a relative pronoun in no way depends 
 upon the case of the antecedent, but is determined 
 by the use of the pronoun in the sentence. 
 
 61. Repetition. 
 
 a. Avoid the monotonous repetition of the same 
 word or phrase. 
 
 Bad: He said that his father said that he thought 
 that the business would soon be on a 
 sound basis. 
 
 Better: He said that his father thought the business 
 would soon be on a sound basis. 
 
 b. Avoid the careless repetition of the conjunction 
 that. 
 
 Example: He said that if there were no more heavy 
 rains that we should be able to take the 
 trip. (Omit either that.) 
 
 Repetition for Clearness. See 49. 
 
 62. Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Modifiers. Note the 
 difference between the relative clauses in the follow- 
 ing sentences: 
 
 Restrictive: Water that is stagnant is unwholesome. 
 Non-Restrictive: The water, which gently lapped the sides 
 of our boat, was clear as crystal. 
 
 Test: If the relative clause in the first sentence is 
 omitted we have the astounding statement: "Water 
 is unwholesome." The omission of the restrictive 
 clause completely changes the meaning of the sentence. 
 If we omit the relative clause in the second sentence, we 
 merely subtract a subordinate thought from our sentence. 
 The assertion of the main clause, however, remains essen- 
 tially the same. 
 
SHALL AND WILL 115 
 
 Remember that commas should be used to set off 
 non-restrictive expressions and that no commas 
 should be used with restrictive expressions. See 20. 
 
 63. Semicolon. See pp. 21-22. 
 
 64. Shall and Will. Note the following common uses of 
 shall and will, and of should and would: 
 
 a. In independent clauses, to express simple futur- 
 ity use: 
 
 I (shall ) He i Wl11 ,, (-come. 
 
 Wei should I 00 ' Theyl W uld i 
 
 b. In independent clauses, to express determination 
 or promise use: 
 
 You ( , -) 
 
 T f MI ^ TT J shall f 
 
 I Twill He \ ., f 
 
 nr \ u( come. r-, I should \ 
 
 We ( would > They ( 
 
 come. 
 
 c. In dependent clauses shall or will follows a main 
 verb in the present tense, should or would one in 
 the past tense. 
 
 Examples: I think that he will come. 
 
 I thought that he would come. 
 
 d. In most dependent clauses use shall and should 
 for all persons to express simple futurity, will 
 and would to express promise or determination. 
 
 Note: An exception is a noun clause in indirect 
 discourse in which the subject is different from 
 that of the main clause. In such a case use 
 rules a-b. 
 
 Examples: I said that he would be present at our 
 
 meeting. (Rule a}. 
 
 I swore that he should be present at 
 ->ur meeting. (Rule b). 
 
A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 e. In questions where the subject is in the second or 
 third person, use the form (shall, should; zvill, 
 would) expected in the answer. 
 
 Examples: Shall you be present at our meeting? I 
 shall (futurity). Will you be present at 
 our meeting? I will (promise). 
 
 Shifting Point of View. See 55. 
 Slang. See 36. 
 
 65. So, Uses of. So and the other conjunctive adverbs 
 give the beginner much trouble. The following 
 cautions will prove helpful. 
 
 a. Remember that the conjunctive adverbs are 
 different from simple adverbs only in the fact 
 that the former are sometimes used to connect 
 clauses. 
 
 b. Remember that when so is used as a connective, 
 the clause it introduces should be set off from the 
 preceding clause by a semicolon or a period, not 
 by a comma. 
 
 Wrong: The rain was falling in torrents, so we decided 
 
 to abandon our plans for the trip. 
 Right: The rain was falling in torrents; so we decided 
 
 to abandon our plans for the trip. 
 Right: The rain was falling in torrents. ,So we de- 
 cided to abandon our plans for the trip. 
 Right: The rain was falling in torrents, and so we de- 
 cided to abandon our plans for the trip. 
 Note that the use of the conjunction and relieves so 
 of its function as a connective and reduces it to a pure 
 adverb. 
 
 c. Remember that the use of a conjunctive adverb 
 for forming a compound sentence is at best an 
 
SPELLING 117 
 
 awkward device and that the sentence may be 
 improved by substituting a subordinate clause 
 for one of the principal clauses. 
 
 Weak: The rain was falling in torrents; so we decided 
 to stay at home. 
 
 Better: Since the rain was falling in torrents, we de- 
 cided to stay at home. 
 
 d. Do not use the adverb so as the loose equivalent 
 of very, exceedingly, etc. 
 
 Vague: I am so tired to-day. (How tired is so tired ?) 
 Clear: I am very tired to-day. 
 Clear: I am so tired to-day that I can hardly work. 
 
 66. Spelling. There is no excuse for frequent errors in 
 spelling. The habit of consulting a dictionary when- 
 ever in doubt as to the correct spelling of a word is the 
 only safe remedy. But the following rules may be 
 of some service. 
 
 a. Distinguish sharply between single and double 
 consonants in such words as appetite, artillery, 
 compelled, control, until. 
 
 b. Do not confuse words of similar or of identical 
 sound, such as too, to, two; sight, site, cite; lead 
 (noun), led' mine, mind; quiet, quite; strait, 
 straight. 
 
 c. Do not confuse c and s in such words as advice, 
 advise, ancestor^ decide, precede, sense, consent, 
 preserve. 
 
 d. Do not confuse the suffixes -ance, -ence; -ant, -ent; 
 -ar, -er in such words as superintendent, inde- 
 pendence, existence, vacant, different, intelligence, 
 grammar. 
 
 e. Distinguish sharply both in spelling and in 
 
118 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 speaking between e and i, as in despair, whither -, 
 whether, disease, divided. 
 
 f. Distinguish between ei and ie in such words as 
 achieve, chief, field, relieve, believe. Remember 
 that as a general rule i follows /, and e follows c 
 as in the word Celia or license. 
 
 g. Remember that words in final silent e usually 
 drop the final -e before a vowel of the suffix, as 
 
 use + ing > using, 
 make + ing > making, 
 choose + ing > choosing. 
 
 h. Poor spellers should remember that mispronun- 
 ciation results in misspelling, as in athzlete, 
 sophomore, referee. 
 
 67, Split Infinitive. Although the split infinitive (to + 
 adverb + infinitive) is defended by some writers, the 
 best writers use it only rarely or never. 
 
 Bad: He began to suddenly hesitate in his speech. 
 Better: He began suddenly to hesitate in his speech. 
 
 68. Subjunctive. Do not substitute the indicative for 
 the subjunctive in the following cases: 
 
 a. To express a condition contrary to fact, or one 
 clearly uncertain: 
 
 Wrong: If he was only able to play, we should win the 
 
 game. 
 
 Right: If he were only able to play, we should win the 
 game. 
 
 b. To express a wish. 
 
 Right: Oh, that he were able to play! (A present re- 
 gret, or a wish unfulfilled for the present.) 
 
TENSE 119 
 
 Right: Oh, that he had been able to play! (A past 
 regret.) 
 
 69. Subordination. See pp. 27-33. 
 
 70. Such as. Punctuation of. When such as is used to 
 introduce an example or a series of examples, it should 
 be preceded by a comma: 
 
 I have many things to do to-day, such as writing let- 
 ters, settling my accounts, packing my trunk, and buying 
 my ticket. 
 
 71. Suspense. See pp. 51-52. 
 
 72. Syllabication. 
 
 A hyphen should be used to mark the division of a 
 word at the end of a line. 
 
 When in doubt as to the proper division of a word 
 into syllables, consult a good dictionary. 
 
 Never divide a word unless the division is necessary. 
 
 73. Tangled Constructions. See pp. 57-58. 
 
 74. Tense. Note carefully the following cautions: 
 
 a. Observe the proper sequence of tenses. 
 
 Wrong: I told him to come as soon as he can. 
 Right: I told him to come as soon as he could. 
 
 b. Do not use the perfect infinitive except to denote 
 an action completed at.the time indicated by the 
 main verb. 
 
 Wrong: I meant to have told you about it. 
 Right: I meant to tell you about it. 
 
 c. Do not use a present participle unless it denotes 
 an action going on at the same time as the action 
 indicated by the main verb. 
 
120 A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 Wrong: Coming of age on June 5, he was able to go 
 
 into business for himself in July. 
 Right: Having come of age on June 5, he was able to 
 go into business for himself in July. 
 
 d. Distinguish sharply between the principal parts 
 of such verbs as come, take, see, go, eat, and drink. 
 
 75. Title, Correct Form of. 
 
 a. Capitalize every important word in the title. 
 
 b. Do not put the title in quotation marks and do 
 not italicize it unless the rules for capitalization 
 or italicizing call for such punctuation. 
 
 c. Leave a space of at least an inch between the 
 title and the top of the page and between the title 
 and the first line of the body of the theme. 
 
 d. Do not omit important words in the title of 
 themes, such as Trip through Mexico for A Trip 
 through Mexico, or Mistakes in College for The 
 Mistakes One May Make in College. 
 
 e. The title and the first sentence of the theme 
 should be independent of each other. The open- 
 ing sentence (or sentences) of the theme should 
 be immediately clear to the reader without refer- 
 ence to the title. 
 
 Titles, Punctuation of. See 22 and 53. 
 
 76. Transition. See pp. 66-68. 
 
 77. Triteness. See 36 and pp. 46-47. 
 
 78. Unity. See pp. 1-2, 8-n. 
 
 79. Vagueness. See pp. 61-62. 
 Vocatives. See 16. 
 Vulgarisms. See 36. 
 
WORDINESS 121 
 
 80. Wordiness. Avoid the use of unnecessary words: 
 
 Wordy: It was a clear, starry night, and not a cloud was 
 to be seen. (The thought is needlessly re- 
 peated.) 
 
 I shall never forget the first time I ascended 
 up in a balloon. (Up is redundant.) 
 
 For a detailed discussion of wordiness see 38, 61, 
 and pp. 56-58. 
 
RETURN 
 
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 SENT ON ILL 
 
 
 
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M41883 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 
A LIST OF COMMON ERRORS 
 
 1. Abbreviations. 
 
 2. Adjective for Adverb. 
 
 3. Agreement of Subject and Verb. 
 
 4. Ambiguity. 
 
 5. "And which." 
 
 6. Apostrophe. 
 
 7. Capitalization. 
 
 8. Case. 
 
 9. Clearness. 
 
 10. Climax. 
 
 11. Coherence. 
 
 12. Colon. 
 
 13. Comma to set off Appositives. 
 
 14. Comma in Compound Sentences. 
 
 15. Comma after Dependent Clause. 
 
 16. Comma in Direct Address. 
 
 17. Comma Fault. 
 
 18. Comma before for. 
 
 19. Comma with Geographical Expressions and Dates. 
 
 20. Comma to set off Non-Restrictive Modifiers. 
 
 21. Comma to mark Omissions. 
 
 22. Comma to mark Parenthetical Expressions. 
 
 23. Comma to set off Participial Phrases. 
 
 24. Comma to Prevent Misreading. 
 
 25. Comma in a Series. 
 
 26. Comma, Unnecessary. 
 
 27. Compound Sentences, Stringy. 
 
 28. Conjunctions. 
 
 29. Conjunctive Adverbs, Semicolon before. 
 
 30. Connectives. 
 
 31. Coordination, Excessive, or Illogical. 
 
 32. Dangling Elliptical Clause, Gerund, or Participle. 
 
 33. Dash. 
 
 34. Dialogue, Paragraphing of. 
 
 35. Dialogue, Punctuation of. 
 
 36. Diction. 
 
 37. Double Negative. 
 
 38. Economy. 
 
 39. Emphasis. 
 
TB 02209 
 
 40. Euphony. 
 
 41. Hyphen, Uses of. 
 
 42. Italics, Uses of. 
 
 43. Like for As. 
 
 44. Modifiers Misplaced. 
 
 45. Monotonous Sentence Structure. 
 
 46. Namely, That Is, Punctuation of. 
 
 47. Number. 
 
 48. Numbers, Representation of. 
 
 49. Omissions, Incorrect. 
 
 50. Order of Words. 
 
 51. Overlapping Dependence. 
 
 52. Parallelism 
 
 53. Period, Uses of. 
 
 54. Period Fault. 
 
 55. Point of View, Shifting. 
 
 56. Possessive with Gerunds. 
 
 57. Punctuation at the Beginning of a Line; 
 
 58. Quotation Marks, Uses of. 
 
 59. Reference, Unexpressed or Vague. 
 
 60. Relative Pronouns. 
 
 61. Repetition. 
 
 62. Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Modifiers. 
 
 63. Semicolon. 
 
 64. Shall and Will. 
 
 65. So, Uses of. 
 
 66. Spelling. 
 
 67. Split Infinitive. 
 
 68. Subjunctive. 
 
 69. Subordination. 
 
 70. Such As, Punctuation of. 
 
 71. Suspense. 
 
 72. Syllabication. 
 
 73. Tangled Constructions. 
 
 74. Tense. 
 
 75. Title, Correct Form of. 
 
 76. Transition. 
 
 77. Triteness. 
 
 78. Unity. 
 
 79. Vagueness. 
 
 80. Wordiness.