CHAPTER I EXPOSITION PURE EXPOSITION 13. Definition and Kinds. When we explain a term (such as piracy) or a process (such as the manufacture of artificial ice) or any systematic thing (such as baseball, or the feudal system, or the organization of a city fire department) we are either speaking or writing Exposition. Exposition, then, is simply explanation. It is a very common and very useful form of writing and it plays a considerable part in conversation, too. Suppose, for instance, that on your way to an examination you are asked the nearest way to a certain building. Your answer is a short exposition. Suppose that in that examination you are asked, “What were the causes of the Civil War?" Your answer is an exposition. Suppose that after the examination you pick up a book called How to Play Bridge. That entire book is an exposition. 14. Choosing a Subject. 1. Choose subjects for which the explanatory method - not the argumentative, descriptive, or narrative method - is the natural mode of development. There are many subjects which might conceivably be expounded, but which if allowed to take their natural course drift into some other kind of writing. These are poor subjects for those who need practice in pure exposition. 2. Since exposition is explanation, the one who explains must know a good deal about the subject. Choose subjects, therefore, on which your knowledge is as full as possible. A theme on "How to Travel in the Tropics " by a person who had never been outside of northern Vermont would probably be unsuccessful. 3. This does not mean that you must always avoid bookish subjects in favor of games which you know how to play or processes which you have actually watched. It means that when you take subjects which necessitate dependence on books you should try by every possible means to make them seem lively and important. need of instruction. "Fishing," even if You will certainly 4. Avoid subjects which every one knows about or thinks he knows about: an explanation of "How to Use a Knife and Fork " would have to be very clever and very tactful to escape failure, and hardly any one would begin a magazine article entitled "How to Black Boots." A successful subject must be one the technique of which is difficult enough to make the reader feel the 5. Avoid subjects that are too big. you know all about it, is too large. succeed better if you limit yourself to "Fly Fishing for Trout," or "Fishing through the Ice for Pickerel," or some other phase of the subject. Particularly is this true if your knowledge has been gained from experience rather than from reading. You have, perhaps, watched the making of hay in New Hampshire. If so, write, not on "Haymaking," but on "Haymaking in New Hampshire," for haymaking in the Middle West may be quite a different matter. 6. Do not except facetiously write on subjects in which expertness cannot possibly be attained by read ing a book of instructions: "How to be Popular " is an art not to be learned from any book. 15. Gathering Material. Far more important than any rhetorical principle in Exposition is the matter of truthfulness, correctness, reliability. Indeed, if it has not a sound basis in fact, no amount of skill in style can make an exposition important, or even safe. For example, one of the briefest and commonest forms of exposition is the recipe for preparing food or medicine. Untruthfulness in such an exposition may result in discomfort, illness, or if wrong directions are given for handling powerful drugs-even death. Similarly, if wrong directions are given for making a canoe watertight, or for avoiding fever in tropical countries, the consequences may be very serious indeed. Do not feel, however, that you can avoid all responsibility for such consequences by writing on something like "The Powers of an English Cabinet Minister" in ' which errors are not serious." All errors are serious. Whatever your subject, you must feel, more deeply than you feel the importance of any rhetorical principle, the tug of conscience that forces you to search the literature of the subject, to cross-examine your own experience, to weigh, to reject, to alter, to think hard and long, in order that your work may, above everything else, be a truthful account. If you have not this feeling, and cannot acquire it, you will merely waste your own time and that of your instructor by going through the motions of writing an exposition. 16. Considering the Reader. In no kind of writing is it more important than in exposition to have a certain reader or a definite body of readers distinctly in mind. 1 Cf. College Readings, 18 ff., and consider the usefulness of "Dick." Regard your teacher not as your reader, but as a coach who tells you whether you are or are not reaching your readers. You will certainly not reach them unless you know (a) who they are, (b) how much they know about the subject, (c) how much they care about it, (d) how much they know about related subjects which can be used as illustrations, and (e) what prejudices they have which require to be overcome. If you examine text-books and other published expositions, you will see that authors often show by their titles or prefaces that they know precisely whom they are addressing: Freshman Rhetoric, Chemistry for Beginners, The Amateur Gardener's Guide, these very titles are lessons in definiteness of purpose. You have one advantage over an actual author, however: you can successfully address your exposition to a single person (such as your younger brother) or a small group of people (such as the pupils of your preparatory school) whom you know; whereas an actual author aims at large bodies of people whom he does not know as individuals. Whether you address one person or many, you must make such a strong and constant effort of the imagination as will enable you to read your reader's mind: it is as important as it is to read your opponent's intentions in a game. Do not begin to write, therefore, until you know for whom you are writing. Then you will be likely to see and include - whatever explanations are needful, and equally clearly you will see and omitwhatever explanations are superfluous. 17. Planning the Exposition. The planning of exposition according to the method here suggested is not a device of the teacher to make the task more difficult: it is, on the contrary, a trial balance, a "stitch in time," a form of insurance against bad structure. It is habitually used by experienced writers who, since they are trying to earn a living rather than to please an instructor, cannot afford to spend their time in going through unnecessary motions. The reason that time spent on an outline is time saved in the later stages of writing is just this: the more of the theme we can see at once, the more distinct will be our idea of the relation of the parts. If you wish to get a clear idea of the relative position of the Southern States, you do not merely read about the matter, nor do you consult an atlas in which Georgia occupies one page and South Carolina another. You look at a map on which, although each state is reduced in size, all the states are shown in their correct relative position. The same reason that makes pictures, maps, and charts vastly more effective than text for certain purposes makes an outline plan the best test of the relative order and weight of the material. For a plan is a kind of picture, and a very vivid one so far as the order of points and the matter of coördination and subordination are concerned. A complete theme of a thousand words is a very difficult thing to hold off at arm's length in order that one may ask: Have I taken up these points in the most effective order? Are my proportions right? Is that second point of equal importance with the third, or is it a subordinate detail under the first main heading? And to move about whole paragraphs is bothersome in comparison with moving about single sentences, especially if each sentence is jotted down on a separate slip of paper. In other words, during the early stages of a composition we are keeping our minds open to various possibilities: a given bit of material may turn out to be of prime importance, of |