11. What do you understand by Emphasis as a quality of style? To what part of our nature does it appeal? How should you distinguish between Emphasis and Force? What in the writer should inspire Emphasis? Should a writer aim to secure Emphasis mechanically? Why not? 12. Can a writing be clear and not emphatic ? Mention some kinds of writing in which Clearness alone is sought. Show why these writings are not properly litera ture. 13. If Emphasis is an appeal to the feelings or the emotions, in what kind of discourse should you expect to find it the prevailing quality? Select passages narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative, and compare them in the class with reference to Emphasis. 14. In the sentences following carets have been put where the bracketed expression at the end of each sentence might be placed. Try these expressions in the several positions, and decide which of them is the better and why. 1. A darker spirit of hope, but of fear, the tool of despotism]. urged the new crusade, ▲ born not slavish in its nature [the creature and 2. With eleven ships, therefore he sailed from Cadiz on the twenty-ninth of June, 1566, [leaving the smaller vessels of his fleet to follow with what speed they might]. 3. I say that the customs and convictions of a democracy are more dangerous to intellectual liberty than those of an aristocracy, because in matters of custom the gentry rule only within their own park-palings, whereas the people rule wherever the breezes blow [when power resides with them]. 4. A Ampere's young wife was in constant anxiety whilst the pair were separated by the severity of their fate, the sufficiency of his diet and the decency of his appearance]. 5. Such people naturally look upon any criticism and any real freedom of speech when these are positively healthy signs, [with distrust and suspicion] [as to Sen 100. Unity and Coherence in the Sentence. tences which contain only one thought, or several thoughts which are so related as to be easily held in mind as one, have unity, and that is a necessary quality in all sentences. Not only must sentences have unity, but they must also give the effect of unity. There are, then, two things to be considered: first, the fundamental unity of the thought; and second, the form of expression which will give that effect. This has been considered in part, in chapter V., but some further discussion of the means of securing unity is in place here. Unity is violated when a clause, phrase, or other expression is "tacked on " after the sentence has seemingly come to an end. The introduction into the sentence anywhere of an incongruous expression of any sort is destructive of unity. Sentences are too short for unity when they exclude closely related subordinates, which are therefore of necessity made independent sentences. Sentences are too long for unity when they include more than can easily be held together as one thought in the mind. Sentences of more than one clause are not unified when the proper relation of equality or subordination is not clearly indicated. A sentence may have unity without being coherent. A sentence lacks coherence when it contains pronouns the antecedents of which are indefinite, when a relative clause is separated from its antecedent, when the relation of one part to another is for any reason uncertain. Incoherence often results in this last case from a careless use of connectives. Participles are often used independent of any word for them to modify, with resulting incoherence. Shifts of construction a change from the active to the passive, from the indicative to the infinitive or subjunctive, from the past to the present are violations of coherence. The sentence must not be a series of independent clauses strung together by conjunctions. Subordinate clauses must have as definite a relation in thought as they have in grammatical structure. Each subordinate clause must have some close relation to the principal clause or principal clauses, and if there are two principal clauses or more they must be closely related. Otherwise the reader will be fatigued by the attempt to find some unifying connection in thought between them. Further, the separation of related ideas is also a tax upon the attention and powers of the reader, and should therefore be avoided. As far as possible we should lighten the mental effort of the reader by so shaping our sentences that they will indicate the connection from thought to thought. IOI. Clearness. Clearness is a fundamental necessity in all writing, and unity and coherence are essential for clearness. A writing in which the thought is uni fied and is developed in a logically and naturally coherent order will ordinarily be clear. In chapter XII. we saw that a proper choice of words is necessary for clearness, and we may now remember further that a proper arrangement of words is equally important. Clearness requires that words and phrases which are related in thought shall be near one another in expression, and that those which are separate in thought shall be separate in expression. 102. Rhetorical Use of Short and Long Sentences. As we have seen, sentence length is determined somewhat by considerations of unity and coherence; but it is also affected by questions of rhetorical effect, the phase of the subject with which we are concerned in this chapter. In general short sentences are more readily understood than long, but their too frequent recurrence, except for special reasons, makes the style abrupt and jerky, and ultimately wearying. The short sentence is especially to be employed when a number of incidents and details are to have a cumulative effect upon the reader. Long sentences add dignity to a composition; but as their meaning is less readily grasped, short sentences should occur at intervals to lessen the reader's fatigue. General A. S. Johnston at Shiloh was engaged in a campaign for territory valuable to the confederacy. He had been transferred from the East to supersede other generals. His fame was at stake. He had been engaged upon one of the most daring and delicate enterprises known in warfare, a surprise of the enemy, to end in wholesale slaughter or capture of the routed hosts on the banks of a bridgeless river. The movement carried well up to a point. There a Union division showed what Johnston pronounced stubbornness. His men hesitated, and he went personally with one brigade in a charge. The charge succeeded, and he drew back to bring up another brigade, when a musket-ball severed an artery in his leg. He made no sign, but kept on giving orders and watching events until the spectators saw that he was wounded, and as if acknowledging it to himself for the first time, said, "Yes, and I fear seriously." He was then on the point of death from hemorrhage. GEORGE L. KILMER: First Actions of Wounded Soldiers, The quick succession of short sentences here serves to emphasize our understanding of the excitement and mental stimulus of ambitious purpose that saved General Johnston from yielding at once to the sensation of physical pain. There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her personally. Whether she belongs naturally among the bright young people, or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good deal of experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper decades without losing the graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say. The men and women, young and old, who throng about her, forget their own ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said the Professor, the other day, in speaking of her. Whether the Professor is in love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he goes to her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader may remember what Number Five said about the possibility of her getting a sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal to taking charge of her if she did. I would not for |