English Composition Author:John Nichol Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART III. RULES RELATING TO CLEARNESS. After Purity the main requisite of style is Perspicuity. A good writer ought not only to write so as to convey some ... more »sense to his readers, but so as to convey in the clearest manner the exact sense of his thought. We should not be left to grope for the meaning among a maze of words, nor be left in doubt between two meanings. Quintilian says, " Care should be taken, not that the reader may understand if he will, but that he must understand whether he will or not." CHAPTER I. SIMPLICITY. One important element of Clearness is Simplicity. A difficult subject cannot be made easy by simple words, but we ought to try to express ourselves in the plainest idiomatic English that will fully represent our ideas. I. Constant confusion arises from the use of long words where there are others more familiar to serve our purpose. With few exceptions, such attempts at fine language as the following should be avoided— " The night, now far advanced, was brilliantly bright with the radiance of astral and lunar effulgence;" i.e., " The night was far advanced, and the moon and stars were shining brightly." " The letter is the fulmination of a man of profound convictions. It may not be accurate in its collocation of events, but it is the outpouring of an earnest soul;" read, " It is the letter of a man of strong convictions;and though perhaps inaccurate in most of its details, it commands respect by the evident sincerity of its purpose." Similarly, shun such periphrases as—" the tender chords" or "the amorous affection," for love; "minatory expressions," for threats ; " the succulent bivalve," for an oyster ; " an eminent agriculturist," for a good farmer; " inebriates " or " dipsomaniacs," for drunkards ; " Daimonic influence," for inspirati...« less