34 Style, Perspicuity, and Precision. A. It is, in its form and construction, the most simple of all; being free from all intricacy of cases, declensions, moods, and tenses. Q. Does it require a high degree of our study and attention? A. Yes; or we can never write it with propriety, purity, and elegance. STYLE, PERSPICUITY, AND PRECISION. Q. What is Style? A. The peculiar manner in which a man expresses his thoughts by language. Q. Under what may the qualities of a good style be arranged? A. Under Perspicuity and Ornament. Q. What is the fundamental quality of a good style? A. Perspicuity. Q. What does Perspicuity, with respect to words and phrases, require? A. Purity, Propriety, and Precision. Q. What is Purity? A. The use of such words and constructions as belong to the idiom of a particular language, in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other languages, or that are obsolete or new coined. Q. What is Propriety? A. The selection of such words as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express. Q. What is Precision? A. Retrenching all superfluities, and pruning the expression so as to exhibit neither more nor less than an exact copy of our idea. Q. What is a Loose Style ? A. One in which it is difficult to ascertain the precise meaning of the writer. Q. What is the chief source of a Loose Style? A. The injudicious use of Synonymous words; such as Austerity and Rigour, Custom and Habit, Pride and Vanity, Only and Alone, Entire and Complete, With and By, which agree in expressing one principal idea, but always with some diversity in the circumstances.* Q. To write or speak with precision, what is requisite ? A. Clear and distinct ideas; and an exact * Austerity relates to the manner of living; rigour, of punishing. Custom respects the action; habit, the actor. Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. Only imports that there is no other of the same kind; alone imports being accompanied by no other; an only child is one who has neither brother nor sister; a child alone is one who is left by itself. A thing is entire by wanting none of its parts; complete, by wanting none of the appendages belonging to it We kill a man with a The criminal is bound sword; he dies by violence. with ropes, by the executioner. and full comprehension of the force of those words we employ. STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES. Q. What are the properties most essential to a perfect sentence? A. Clearness; Unity; Strength; and Harmony. Q. From what does Ambiguity, the opposite of Clearness, arise? A. Either from a wrong choice of words, or a wrong collocation of them. Q. In the arrangement of sentences, what capital rule should be observed ? A. Place the words or members, most nearly related, as near to each other as possible; so as to make their mutual relation clearly appear. Q. What attention should be paid to adverbs, and the relatives who, which, and what? A. Great; as, by their position, is often determined the meaning of a sentence. Q. What is the first rule to be observed for preserving the unity of a sentence? A Change the scene, during the course of the sentence, as little as possible. Hurry not, by sudden transitions, from person to person, nor from subject to subject. Q. What is the second? A. Never crowd into a sentence things which have so little connexion, that they can be divided into two or three sentences. Q. What is the third rule ? A. Keep clear of all parentheses in the middle of a sentence. Q. What is the last? A. Always bring the sentence to a full and perfect close. Q. In what consists the strength of a sen tence? A. In such a disposition of the several words and members, as shall bring out the sense to the best advantage, and give every word and member due force. Q. What is the first rule for promoting the strength of a sentence? A. Prune it of all redundant words and members.* Q. What is the second ? A. Attend particularly to the use of copalatives, relatives, and all the particles employed for transition and connexion ;-as but, and, which, when, where, &c. Q. What is the third ? A. Place the capital word or words in that part of the sentence where they will make the fullest impression. Q. What is the fourth? "Concise your diction, let your sense be clear, Nor with a weight of words, fatigue the ear." HORAGE. A. Make the members of the sentence go on rising in their importance one above another. Q. What is the fifth? A. Avoid concluding the sentence with an adverb, a preposition, or any inconsiderable word. Q. What is the sum of all rules for the construction of sentences? A. Communicate, in the clearest and most natural order, the ideas which you mean to transfuse into the minds of others. HARMONY OF SENTENCES. Q. What is the harmony of a period ? Q. What things are to be considered in the harmony of Periods? A. First, agreeable sound, without any particular expression. Next, the sound so ordered, as to become expressive of the sense. The first is the more common; the second, the higher kind of beauty. Q. On what does agreeable sound, in prose, depend? A. On the choice of words, and on their arrangement. Q. What attention did the ancients pay to the music of sentences ? |