PREFACE In order to write English in a way that befits an educated person, one must know a certain body of rules. The term rules is here used in a wide sense, including not only general precepts, such as the dictum that in a sentence "every part should be subservient to one principal affirmation," but also those numerous particular precepts which refuse to merge themselves into convenient generalizations — for instance, those to the effect that it is bad English to say "I devote my evenings in study" for "I devote my evenings to study," that the verb except should not be used in the sense of accept, nor the noun principle in the sense of the adjective principal, and that all right should be written as two words, the first spelled with two l's. When I say that one must know these rules, I mean that one must not merely be acquainted with them, but habitually observe them. Some of these rules are known and followed by nearly every person who has grown up in an English-speaking community. Nearly every such person knows, for example, the correct meaning of several hundred English words (that is to say, he knows several hundred rules directing how these words should be used); knows how to spell certain words, fewer than those which he knows how to use; and knows that the pronoun I and such nouns as John, Mary, Smith, and Jones should be capitalized. But ignorance of many other rules. which might easily be enumerated if there were any need - is shared by children in the grammar school, boys and girls in high school, high-school graduates of recent and of long standing, college freshmen, college seniors, bachelors and masters of arts, and members of the learned professions. With this fact in mind, I published in 1907 a little book called a Handbook of Composition, the purpose of which was to present the rules that, so far as I had observed, were unknown to any considerable number of the class of people V mentioned above. Since that time my attention has been drawn to other deficiencies of the same sort as those treated in the Handbook. Some of these are matters of good English (technically so called), phraseology, sentence-structure, reference, and the structure of compositions; others concern the mechanical processes involved in writing — that is, manuscript-arrangement, spelling, the compounding of words, the use of abbreviations, the representation of numbers, syllabication, capitalization, italicizing, punctuation, and paragraphing. The rules necessary for correcting these mechanical deficiencies I have formulated in this book; and along with them I have incorporated most of the rules of the Handbook that concern the same subjects, altering them as there seemed to be occasion, and illustrating them more fully. I have said that in order to write as befits an educated person, one must not only be acquainted with certain rules but also observe them habitually. Learning to write well, then, is more than being informed of these rules; it is getting the rules fixed in one's habitual practice. To assist the student in this latter part of the work is the object of the exercises in the present book. Some of these are little more than manual exercises; but such, I think, are just what in many cases students of writing need. Many people who write "to hot" and " "" and "" finaly 99 alright are acquainted with the rules which they thereby violate; it is their hands that need discipline. I hoped that the Handbook would find a place in the service of many who were not studying English in the classroom, who were not students in any school or college, but had writing of some sort to do, and wanted occasional help in doing it; and this hope has been realized, to my great pleasure. Likewise I have wished to make the present book as helpful as possible to any one who needed the information it should contain, whether he was in a college, a high school, an office, or a warehouse. Nevertheless, most of the people who may find the book useful will be, as a matter of course, students under the direction of teachers. I have devised certain apparatus, to facilitate its use by such students, which I wish now to explain. The chief benefit derived from theme-writing lies probably in the instructor's indication of errors in the themes and his showing how these errors are to be corrected; for by these means the student may learn the rules that he is inclined to violate, and thus may be helped to eliminate the defects from his writing. Hence it is important that the errors and the way to correct them be shown to the student as completely and clearly as possible. For instance, suppose that a theme contains the sentence "I have always chosen for my companions people whom I thought had high ideals.” Suppose the instructor points out the grammatical fault and gives the student information to this effect: "An expression such as he says, he thinks, or he hears interpolated in a relative clause does not affect the case of the subject of the clause. For example, 'The man who I thought was my friend deceived me' is correct; who' is the subject of 'was my friend'; 'I thought' is a parenthesis which does not affect the case of 'who.' In your sentence, whom' is not the object of thought,' but the subject of had high ideals'; it should therefore be in the nominative case." From this information the student is likely to get more than the mere knowledge that the "whom " in this particular case should be changed to "who"; he is likely to learn a principle, the knowledge of which if he will remember it will keep him from committing similar errors in future. But the theme from which one sentence is quoted above contains fourteen other errors; and the forty-nine other themes which the instructor is to hand back to-morrow morning contain among them about seven hundred and eighty-five more. How shall the instructor, as he indicates these eight hundred errors, furnish the information called for by each one? Obviously he must use some kind of shorthand. Suppose, then, that he writes opposite the incorrect "whom" above quoted the expression "Gr." or "b. E." or 66 case." Do these expressions furnish the student with the information he needs regarding that "whom"? It seems to me that they do not. They are intended to imply all that information, but I doubt whether one student out of five hundred ever sees the implication. To be sure, four hundred and ninety-six out of five hundred will, possi bly, see that something is wrong with "whom," and will change it to "who" or will eliminate it in some other way —for instance, by altering the sentence thus: "People who seemed to have high aspirations have always been selected by me for companions." But they will do this without knowing why any change should be made; and thus the correction of the error will fall short of the instructive value which it should have, and which it would have if it were made intelligently. Yet shorthand must be used in correcting themes. Is there no system of shorthand which conveys to the student the information he should have regarding each error marked in his themes? There is such a system; it consists of references to a book. If the writer of the theme containing the erroneous "whom" has a book which explains, in a section numbered 33, the grammatical rule that he has violated, the instructor can do his duty in the premises by writing "33" opposite the "whom "; and if the book contains likewise a piece of information appropriate to the other seven hundred and ninety-nine errors above supposed, each piece placed under a reference number, the instructor can do his duty in the case of the seven hundred and ninety-nine errors by writing a reference number opposite each one. The Handbook was designed, and the present book has been designed, to be used in this way. To illustrate further the use of the present book for reference in the correction of themes, suppose a page of a student's theme reads as follows: My associates have usualy My fathers buisness made it (the) chinese, germans, and The errors in this passage can be indicated, and the writer can be referred to the information on each point by means of the following numbers, which designate sections in this book: My associates have usualy 70 101 been choosen with some cons- 173-175 46 who I (thought) beleived posessed 96, 98 32, 33 482 My fathers buisness made it 66 101 neccesary, for our family to 452 move about considerably so 279,280,282 I have been thrown amoung 101 46 (the) many differant classes 101 293, 294, 46, 197 of people, (the) easterners, nort- 173,174, 178 197, 328 herners, westerners and southerners, 197 46 (the) chinese, germans, and 198 198 french, have all been under 329 292, 257, 203 my observation this enabeles me 80 a, b 183 -ly and with-out difficulty. 129 The writer of the passage might also be advised to do, more or less at his leisure, the following exercises: 627, concerning "usualy " 678, concerning "cons-ideration," "nort-herners," "ju-dge," and "quick -ly" 657, concerning "there" |