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CHAPTER III

THE SENTENCE

SECTION 28

What a Sentence Is

A SENTENCE may be defined as "a word or a group of words capable of expressing a complete thought and meaning." 1 "The dew" and "on the rose," although each is a group of words, are not sentences, because they are not capable, at least in their present forms, of expressing a complete thought or meaning. "The dew is on the rose," however, is a sentence, because it is a group of words expressing a complete thought. Every sentence, you know from your study of grammar, must have a subject and a predicate, one of which may sometimes be merely understood, and both of which may be modified by words, phrases, or clauses, and extended in complex and compound forms.

But this understanding of a sentence will not carry you far in the writing of good English sentences. You have now to learn that a sentence may satisfy every requirement of the definition just quoted, and yet make bad English. If you write, "Place an ordinary college man in a position inferior to that of a non-college man, and he will quickly overtake him and soon pass him by," you break no rule of 1 Sweet, A New English Grammar, vol. i, sec. 447.

grammar. Yet you do not make clear to me what you started out to say, that it is the college man who quickly overtakes and soon passes by the non-college man. Your sentence, though it is grammatically correct, is really bad English, since it does not say what you meant it to say. If you write, "He makes gestures like a wind-blown scarecrow," you again break no rule of grammar. Yet you would show questionable veracity, and little discernment, were you to apply such a comparison to an accomplished lecturer. The sentences you are to write, then, are to be not only grammatically correct, but also rhetorically effective. They are to consist of "proper words in proper places." 1

Such a sentence should be distinguished by at least five essentials :

1. It should be correct.

2. It should be clear.

3. It should be effective.

4. It should be coherent.

5. It should have unity.

Each of these essentials may profitably be discussed in a section by itself.

SECTION 29

Essentials of the Sentence

1. IT SHOULD BE CORRECT

Only a word need be said about correctness in sentences. To give here rules for correctness would be to repeat what you have already learned in grammar, whose most practical purpose is to teach the making of correct sentences.

1 Swift's definition of a good style.

Though it is true that a sentence must be more than merely correct to be a good English sentence, it is just as true that a sentence must be correct before it can be either clear or effective or coherent or a unit. You begin to make good English sentences by first making them conform to the rules of grammar to the rules of good usage as set by the practice of the best writers and speakers of our language. This book begins where grammar leaves off. It presupposes that your study of grammar was not study wasted. It presupposes that your study of grammar has enabled you, apart from such slips in language as all of us make now and then, to write English sentences that are at least correct.

NOTE. A review of such principles of grammar as are most frequently violated may be helpful at this point. Some special matters may be mentioned: The article and its uses; formation of foreign and irregular plurals; formation and uses of the genitive (confine the genitive sign mainly to living beings); confusion of nominative and objective pronoun forms; misuse of adjectives for adverbs, and of adverbs for adjectives; concord (of subject and predicate, of adjective or of participle - and noun, of pronoun and antecedent); sequence of tenses; the nature and constructions of infinitives and of participles; the abuse of the historical present; when to use the subjunctive mood; "shall" and "will"; "may" and "can," "lie" and "lay," "sit" and "set," "rise" and "raise"; placing of modifiers ("only," restrictive phrases, so-called split infinitive,1 etc.); the use of adjective and of adverbial phrases and clauses; comparison of adjectives (dwell on the confusion of the comparative and the superlative); the use of correlative conjunctions; the omission of words necessary to the sense; and, in general, any matter in the analysis of the sentence which needs to be reviewed.

1 The split infinitive is an awkward construction, and should in general be avoided. Occasionally, however, it can be effectively used to bring an adverb into an emphatic position; e.g. "I desire to thoroughly understand the matter." Though violently attacked by purists, the construction is steadily gaining ground.

SECTION 30

Essentials of the Sentence

2. IT SHOULD BE CLEAR

of

If a sentence is correct, it conforms to the usage the best writers and speakers of our language; if it is clear, it says to the reader instantly what it says to the writer; if it is effective, it says this in an impressive way; if it is coherent, it reads smoothly, and its parts "stick together"; if it has unity, it has but one central idea. Each essential of the sentence aids each other essential. If you write a correct sentence, your sentence is more than likely to have at least some degree of clearness, of effectiveness, of coherence, and of unity. And so it is with each other essential. Of these five essentials, correctness and clearness are to be sought after first of all; effectiveness, coherence, and unity, only after correctness and clearness have been obtained. If any one of the five is of supreme importance, it undoubtedly is clearness. end of language is to enable you to communicate your thoughts to others, and without clearness you are powerless to do so. There are times in the lives of all when it is of utmost importance that certain thoughts be communicated to others; whether correctly or effectively, or coherently, or with unity, does not so much matter as that they be communicated. It is a matter within the observation of all, moreover, that uneducated and unrefined people frequently happen to express their thoughts clearly, and sometimes even effectively, in incorrect English. Their example, of course, is not to be imitated, but it nevertheless illustrates the supremeness of clearness.

The

If a sentence is clear,

to repeat what was said at the beginning of this section, it says to the reader instantly what it says to the writer. From such a sentence the reader gets but a single meaning, which is the same meaning the writer put into it, and he gets this meaning at once and without effort. If the reader is forced, by a misused word or by some faulty construction, to puzzle over the meaning of a sentence, and if he comes to a full understanding of it only after some study, be it ever so little, that sentence lacks clearness. This lack of clearness may be due to one or to both of two fundamental faults: The fault of obscurity, which prevents a meaning from being readily seen, and the fault of ambiguity, which admits of two or more meanings, and thus leaves the reader in doubt as to the writer's precise meaning.

SOME RULES FOR CLEARNESS 1

(1) Do not attempt to express yourself in language before you thoroughly know your own meaning.2

(2) Be precise in your use of words.3

(3) Leave no doubt as to the antecedent of each pronoun. As a pronoun is a word used instead of a noun, the noun instead of which the pronoun is used should be the noun immediately preceding the pronoun. Repeat a noun rather than substitute for it a pronoun that will not suggest that noun at once and unmistakably.

[Bad.] John gave Thomas some money; he is very well off. [Good.] John, who is very well off, gave Thomas some money. [Bad.] Five other words occur to me which are commonly misused

1 See Abbott's How to Write Clearly.

2 Coleridge's suggestion; see Lectures, vol. iv, 337.

8 This matter is treated in Chapter IV.

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