INVENTION. Compound Sentence (Lessons 10 1. Clauses in the Same 2. Clauses Adversative. a Consequence of the 4. One Clause Expressing an Inference from the other. Sentences with Compound and Complex Clauses (Lessons 12 and 13). Substitution and Contraction (Lessons 14-17). Expansion and Substitution (Lessons 18-20). Synthesis of Sentences into Paragraphs (Lesson 21). Discussion of Isolated and Related Paragraphs - Argumentative, Analysis of Narrative, Descriptive, Fictitious, and Argumenta- Capital Letters and Punctuation (Lessons 2–6, 8–10, 12 and 13). QUALITIES OF STYLE. LESSON 31. PERSPICUITY. Thus far we have been considering the thought, the subject-matter of discourse, one of the two things with which rhetoric is concerned. In doing this we have been forced to deal with the sentence and the paragraph, but we have dealt with them only as the necessary forms in which thought must be expressed. You have been made familiar with the various kinds of sentences, have learned to construct them in all their varieties and to combine them into paragraphs. But you have been taught little directly of the qualities which should belong to them, — qualities which everything written or spoken should have to make it the happy instrument of expression — and so you have learned little of style proper. To this great department of rhetoric we have now come. Style. We might, with De Quincey and others, assert that thought and expression are so "intertwined," so "inextricably blended," that the two are, in some real sense, one - that any change of either is or involves a change of the other. We might more properly insist that style applies to thought as well as to expression, since men differ as essentially in the one as in the other. And this we do not deny, but rather affirm, when, uniting the two in the definition, we say, By style we mean the manner in which the thought is expressed in words. Every one has his manner of expressing thought, just as he has a cast of features, qualities of voice, and a carriage of body peculiar to himself. Into every one's style, at least three elements should enter and determine it. I. The Topic. -Just as a piece expressing various passions demands of the reader a varying pitch and stress, a varying rate of movement, and different tones of voice, so various topics require of the writer various styles — the topic entering into the style and helping to determine it. One writing on different subjects will not write uniformly, if he writes naturally. "The perfectly endowed man will unconsciously write in all styles," says Herbert Spencer. II. The Writer's Individuality.-Room for the man himself is always to be found in his style. This truth has found extreme statement in the definition, "Style is the man." His temperament, tastes, attainments, culture— everything mental that distinguishes him as an individual - may be expressed in his use of imagery, his choice of words and his arrangement and articulation of them in the sentence, in the cast of his paragraphs, and in all else that goes to the making of style. It is not the business of rhetoric to rob one's style of this element. It should only wear down the sharp angles and subdue the writer's peculiarities, so that his style shall be free from mannerisms everything offensively characteristic of him. And this is done by the element of III. Authority. The principles which eminent writers have consciously or unconsciously observed and the means they have used furnish rhetoric the lessons it is to teach, and point out to the pupil the paths he may follow. What such writers have done is permissible to him, what they have found they could not safely do is unlawful. And this element enters largely into all style that becomes classic, putting a curb upon the author's eccentricities, and becoming a spur to every effort made for the perfecting of his style. The first cardinal quality of style is Perspicuity. - Perspicuity is distinctness of expression, transparency. Our thought should be seen through our words, requiring of the reader or hearer no careful search to discover it. What the air, washed clean of smoke and vapor and dust, is to the trees and the rocks of distant hills, bringing them near and into sharp distinctness, that should our language be to the thoughts it contains. Since we write and speak to communicate something, our purpose is defeated if we are not clear; we might better have spared our poor labor. It is a duty which every one owes his reader or hearer to speak not simply so that he can be understood but so that he cannot reasonably fail of being understood. One has scarcely more right to take another's time and energy in a hunt for the meaning than he has to take another's fruit or his wares without compensation. To be perspicuous, then, is in a just sense only to be honest. Perspicuity is to other qualities of speech what light is to colors that by which they exist and are seen. Style that lacks it has few excellences that are apparent, as the discourse has little thought that is obvious. A Relative Quality. But it ought to be said that perspicuity is a relative quality. That is, what may be clear to one reader or hearer may not be to another of fewer years or less culture. Style perfectly plain to an audience of scholars may be obscure to men and women less intelligent, or to children, just as food easily digested by a man in vigorous health may be indigestible to an invalid. judging the style of any production, it is but fair to take into account the ability of those for whom it is intended. In Perspicuity depends I. Upon the Author's Mastery of His Subject. — Much mistiness of expression is only the haze that partly hides the subject from the writer. The subject is seen by him but only in the gray dawn, it does not stand revealed in noon-day light. Remember that you cannot convey plainly to others more than you thoroughly know, or make your thought clearer to them than it is to yourself. It will be a triumph if you can make them see what you see and see it as clearly. The work of accumulating material and of preparing frameworks, insisted on as preliminary to the writing, will be of great service here. It will supply you with the knowledge needed, and will distribute the facts, dropping each item into its place and bringing order out of confusion. Seeing everything you need, and seeing it where it belongs, your task of making it apparent to others should be comparatively easy. II. Upon the Author's Use of Words. This subject, which will run through many Lessons, must be subdivided. 1. Use Simple Words. The simplest words in the English language are those which belong to the mother-element of it — the Anglo-Saxon. These were never so highly compounded as were the Latin and the Greek; they are therefore simpler, since each word in a compound enters its meaning into that of the whole. They were never so highly inflected as were the Latin and the Greek, and nearly all of the few inflections they once possessed fell off during the three centuries after the Norman Conquest; hence these words are the shortest in the language, and for that reason the simplest. Besides, the Anglo-Saxon were the original words in our language, used to name the things known to our ancestors, and to denote the qualities, acts, states, and relations of these things. They are thus our household words, and, as a whole, are better understood by all, even by the educated. |