The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language - Sherwin Cody (bts books to read .TXT) 📗

in the same sentence or paragraph, one of which contradicts the other. Thus should we say “Pilot us through the wilderness of life” we would introduce two figures of speech, that of a ship being piloted and that of a caravan in a wilderness being guided, which would contradict each other. This is called a “mixed metaphor.”

3. Allusion. Sometimes a metaphor consists in a reference or allusion to a well known passage in literature or a fact of history. Examples: Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, we Sinais climb and know it not. (Reference to Moses on Mt. Sinai). He received the lion's share of the profits. (Reference to the fable of the lion's share). Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed by a kiss. (Reference to the betrayal of Christ by Judas).

4. Personification. Sometimes the metaphor consists in speaking of inanimate things or animals as if they were human. This is called the figure of personification. It raises the lower to the dignity of the higher, and so gives it more importance.

Examples: Earth felt the wound. Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire. The moping Owl doth to the Moon complain. True Hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated needs but to be seen. Speckled Vanity will sicken soon and die.

(Note in the next to the last example that the purely impersonal is raised, not to human level, but to that of the brute creation. Still the figure is called personification).

5. Apostrophe. When inanimate things, or the absent, whether living or dead, are addressed as if they were living and present, we have a figure of speech called apostrophe. This figure of speech gives animation to the style. Examples: O Rome, Rome, thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Take her, O Bridegroom, old and gray!

6. Antithesis. The preceding figures have been based on likeness. Antithesis is a figure of speech in which opposites are contrasted, or one thing is set against another. Contrast is almost as powerful as comparison in making our ideas clear and vivid.

Examples: (Macaulay, more than any other writer, habitually uses antitheses). Saul, seeking his father's asses, found himself turned into a king. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bowstring; to a woman and it is a harp-string. I thought that this man had been a lord among wits, but I find that he is only a wit among lords. Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

7. Metonymy. Besides the figures of likeness and unlikeness, there are others of quite a different kind. Metonymy consists in the substitution for the thing itself of something closely associated with it, as the sign or symbol for the thing symbolized, the cause for the effect, the instrument for the user of it, the container for the thing contained, the material for the thing made of it, etc.

Examples: He is a slave to the cup. Strike for your altars and your fires. The kettle boils, He rose and addressed the chair. The palace should not scorn the cottage. The watched pot never boils. The red coats turned and fled. Iron bailed and lead rained upon the enemy. The pen is mightier than the sword.

8. Synecdoche. There is a special kind of metonymy which is given the dignity of a separate name. It is the substitution of the part for the whole or the whole for the part. The value of it consists in putting forward the thing best known, the thing that will appeal most powerfully to the thought and feeling.

Examples: Come and trip it as you go, on the light fantastic toe. American commerce is carried in British bottoms. He bought a hundred head of cattle. It is a village of five hundred chimneys. He cried, “A sail, a sail!” The busy fingers toll on.

Exercise.

Indicate the figure of speech used in each of the following sentences:

1. Come, seeling Night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful Day.

2. The coat does not make the man.

3. From two hundred observatories in Europe and America, the glorious artillery of science nightly assaults the skies.

4. The lamp is burning.

5. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.

6. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.

7. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the machinery of sensibility; one is wind power, the other water power.

8. When you are an anvil, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.

9. Save the ermine from pollution.

10. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their lives is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Turn each of the above sentences into plain language. Key: (the numbers in parantheses indicate the figure of speech in the sentences as numbered above). 1. (4); 2. (7); 3. (2); 4. (7); 5. (5); 6. (1); 7. (2 and 6); 8. (2 and 6); 9. (7); 10. (2).

CHAPTER III. STYLE.

There have been many definitions of style; but the disputes of the rhetoricians do not concern us. Style, as the word is commonly understood, is the choice and arrangement of words in sentences and of sentences in paragraphs as that arrangement is effective in expressing our meaning and convincing our readers or hearers. A good style is one that is effective, and a bad style is one which fails of doing what the writer wishes to do. There are as many ways of expressing ideas as there are ways of combining words (that is, an infinite number), and as many styles as there are writers. None of us wishes precisely to get the style of any one else; but we want to form a good one of our own.

We will briefly note the elements mentioned by those who analyse style, and then pass on to concrete examples.

Arrangement of words in a sentence. The first requirement is that the arrangement of words should be logical, that is grammatical. The rhetorical requirements are that—

1. One sentence, with one principal subject and one principal predicate, should try to express one thought and no more. If we try to mix two thoughts in the same sentence, we shall come to grief. Likewise, we shall fail if we attempt to mix two subjects in the same paragraph or composition.

2. The words in the sentence should be arranged that those which are emphatic will come in the emphatic places. The beginning and the end of a sentence are emphatic positions, the place before any mark of punctuation is usually emphatic, and any word not in its usual place with relation to the word it modifies grammatically is especially emphatic. We must learn the emphatic positions by experience, and then our instinct will guide us. The whole subject is one of the relative values of words.

3. The words in a sentence should follow each other in such a simple, logical order that one leads on to another, and the whole meaning flows like a stream of water. The reader should never be compelled to stop and look back to see how the various ideas “hang together.” This is the rhetorical side of the logical relationship which grammar requires. Not only must grammatical rules be obeyed, but logical instinct must be satisfied with the linking of idea to idea to make a complete thought. And the same law holds good in linking sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into whole compositions.

These three requirements have been named Unity, Mass, and Coherence.

The variations in sentences due to emphasis have given rise to a rhetorical division of sentences into two classes, called loose and periodic.

A loose sentence is one in which words follow each other in their natural order, the modifiers of the verb of course following the verb. Often many of these modifiers are not strictly necessary to complete the sense and a period may be inserted at some point before the close of the sentence without destroying its grammatical completeness. The addition of phrases and clauses not strictly required constitutes looseness of sentence structure.

A periodic sentence is one which is not grammatically or logically complete till the end. If the sentence is somewhat long, the mind is held in suspense until the last word is uttered.

Example. The following is a loose sentence: “I stood on the bridge at midnight, as the clocks were striking the hour.” The same sentence becomes periodic by transposition of the less important predicate modifiers, thus—“At midnight, as the clocks were striking the hour, I stood on the bridge.”

It will be observed that the periodic form is adapted to oratory and similar forms of eloquent writing in which the mind of the reader or hearer is keyed up to a high pitch of expectancy; while the loose sentence is the one common in all simple narrative and unexcited statement.

Qualities of Style. Writers on rhetoric note three essential qualities of style, namely clearness, force, and elegance.

Clearness of style is the direct result of clearness and simplicity of thought. Unless we have mastered our thought in every particular before trying to express it, confusion is inevitable. At the same time, if we have mastered our thought perfectly, and yet express it in language not understood by the persons to whom and for whom we write or speak, our style will not be clear to them, and we shall have failed in conveying our thoughts as much as if we had never mastered them.

Force is required to produce an effect on the mind of the hearer. He must not only understand what we say, but have some emotion in regard to it; else he will have forgotten our words before we have fairly uttered them. Force is the appeal which words make to the feeling, as clearness is the appeal they make to the understanding.

Elegance is required only in writing which purports to be good literature. It is useful but not required in business letters, or in newspaper writing; but it is absolutely essential to higher literary art. It is the appeal which the words chosen and the arrangement selected make to our sense of beauty. That which is not beautiful has no right to be called “literature,” and a style which does not possess the subtle elements of beauty is not a strictly “literary” style.

Most of us by persistent effort can conquer the subject of clearness. Even the humblest person should not open his mouth or take up his pen voluntarily unless he can express himself clearly; and if he has any thought to express that is worth expressing, and wants to express it, he will sooner or later find a satisfactory way of expressing it.

The thing that most of us wish to find out is, how to write with force.
Force is attained in various ways, summarized as follows:

1. By using words which are in themselves expressive.

2. By placing those words in emphatic positions in the sentence.

3. By varying the length and form of successive sentences so that the reader or hearer shall never be wearied by monotony.

4. By figures of speech, or constant comparison and illustration, and making words suggest ten times as much as they say.

5. By keeping persistently at one idea, though from every possible point of view and without repetition of any kind, till that idea has sunk into the mind of the hearer and has been fully comprehended.

Force is destroyed by the—Vice of repetition with slight change or addition; Vice of monotony in the words, sentences or paragraphs; Vice of over-literalness and exactness; Vice of trying to emphasize more than one thing at a time; Vice of using many words with little meaning; or words barren of suggestiveness and destitute of figures of speech; and its opposite,