Composition-Rhetoric Part 11

(Do not attempt to remember the language. Try to get the main thought of what is read and then write a paragraph which sets forth that same idea.

Use different ill.u.s.trations if you can.)

NOTE.--This theme may be repeated as many times as seems desirable.

+40. Importance of the Paragraph.+--Emphasis needs to be laid upon the importance of the paragraph. Our ability to express our thoughts clearly depends, to a large extent, upon our skill in constructing paragraphs. The writing of correct sentences is not sufficient. Though each of a series of sentences may be correct, they may, as a whole, say but little, and that very poorly; while another set of sentences, which cl.u.s.ter around some central idea, may set it forth most effectively. It is only by giving our sentence groups that unity of thought which combines them into paragraphs that we make them most effective. A well-constructed paragraph will make clear some idea, and a series of such paragraphs, related to each other and properly arranged, will set forth the sum of our thoughts on any subject.

+41. Paragraph Length.+--The proper length of a paragraph cannot be determined by rule. Sometimes the thought to be presented will require several sentences; sometimes two or three will be sufficient. A single ill.u.s.tration may make a topic statement clear, or several ill.u.s.trations may be required. The writer must judge when he has included enough to make his meaning understood, and must avoid including so much that the reader will become weary. Usually a paragraph that exceeds three hundred words will be found too long, or else it will contain more than one main idea, each of which could have been presented more effectively in a separate paragraph.

+42. Indentation.+--In written and printed matter the beginning of a paragraph is indicated by an indentation. Indentation does not make a paragraph, but we indent because we are beginning a new paragraph.

Indentation thus serves the same purpose as punctuation. It helps the reader to determine when we have finished one main thought and are about to begin another. Beginners are apt to use indentations too frequently.

There are some special uses of indentation in letter writing, printed conversation, and other forms, but for ordinary paragraph division the indentation is determined by the thought, and its correct use depends upon clear thinking. Can the following selection be improved by reparagraphing?

Outside in the darkness, gray with whirling snowflakes, he saw the wet lamps of cabs shining, and he darted along the line of hansoms and coupes in frantic search for his own.

"Oh, there you are," he panted, flinging his suit case up to a snow-covered driver. "Do your best now; we're late!" And he leaped into the dark coupe, slammed the door, and sank back on the cushions, turning up the collar of his heavy overcoat.

There was a young lady in the farther corner of the cab, buried to her nose in a fur coat. At intervals she shivered and pressed a fluffy m.u.f.f against her face. A glimmer from the sleet-smeared lamps fell across her knees.

Down town flew the cab, swaying around icy corners, b.u.mping over car tracks, lurching, rattling, jouncing, while its silent occupants, huddled in separate corners, brooded moodily at their respective windows.

Snow blotted the gla.s.s, melting and running down; and over the watery panes yellow light from shop windows played fantastically, distorting vision.

Presently the young man pulled out his watch, fumbled for a match box, struck a light, and groaned as he read the time.

At the sound of the match striking, the young lady turned her head. Then, as the bright flame illuminated the young man's face, she sat bolt upright, dropping the m.u.f.f to her lap with a cry of dismay.

He looked up at her. The match burned his fingers; he dropped it and hurriedly lighted another; and the flickering radiance brightened upon the face of a girl whom he had never before laid eyes on.

"Good heavens!" he said, "where's my sister?"

The young lady was startled but resolute. "You have made a dreadful mistake," she said; "you are in the wrong cab--"

+Theme XX.+--_Write a theme using one of the subjects below:_--

1. A personal incident.

2. The advantages and disadvantages of recesses.

3. Complete the story commenced in the selection just preceding.

(Make a note of the different ideas you may discuss. Which are important enough to become topic statements? Which may be grouped together in one paragraph? In what order shall they occur? After your theme is written, consider the paragraphs. Does the definition apply to them? Are any of them too short or too long?)

+43. Reasons for Studying Paragraph Structure.+--A knowledge of the way in which a paragraph is constructed will aid us in determining the thought it contains. There are several methods of developing paragraphs, and usually one of these is better suited than another to the expression of our thought. Attention given to the methods used by others will enable us both to understand better what we read, and to employ more effectively in our own writing that kind of paragraph which best expresses our thought. Hence we shall give attention to the more common forms of paragraph development.

+44. Development by Giving Specific Instances.+--If you hear a general statement, such as, "Dogs are useful animals," you naturally think at once of some of the ways in which they are useful, or of some particular occasion on which a dog was of use. If a friend should say, "My dog, Fido, knows many amusing tricks," you would expect the friend to tell you some of them. A large part of our thinking consists of furnishing specific instances to ill.u.s.trate general ideas which arise. Since the language we use is but the expression of the thoughts we have, it happens that many of our paragraphs are made up of general statements and the specific instances used to ill.u.s.trate these statements. When the topic sentence is a general statement, we naturally seek to supply specific instances, and the writer will most readily make his meaning clear by furnishing such ill.u.s.trations. Either one or many instances may be used. The object is to explain the topic statement or to prove its truth, and a good writer will use that number of instances which best accomplishes his purpose.

In the following selection notice how the topic statement, set forth and repeated in the first part of the paragraph, is ill.u.s.trated in the last part by means of several specific instances:--

Nine tenths of all that goes wrong in this world is because some one does not mind his business. When a terrible accident occurs, the first cry is that the means of prevention were not sufficient. Everybody declares we must have a new patent fire escape, an automatic engine switch, or a high-proof non-combustible sort of lamp oil. But a little investigation will usually show that all the contrivances were on hand and in good working order; the real trouble was that somebody didn't mind his business; he didn't obey orders; he thought he knew a better way than the way he was told; he said, "Just this once I'll take the risk," and in so doing, he made other people take the risk too; and the risk was too great.

At Toronto, Canada, not long ago, a conductor, against orders, ran his train on a certain siding, which resulted in the death of thirty or forty people. The engineer of a mill, at Rochester, N.Y., thought the engine would stand a higher pressure than the safety valve indicated, so he tied a few bricks to the valve to hold it down; result--four workmen killed, a number wounded, and a mill blown to pieces. The _City of Columbus_, an iron vessel fitted out with all the means of preservation and escape in use on shipboard, was wrecked on the best-known portion of the Atlantic coast, on a moonlight night, at the cost of one hundred lives, because the officer in command took it into his head to save a few ship-lengths in distance by hugging the sh.o.r.e, in direct disobedience to the captain's parting orders.

The best-ventilated mine in Colorado was turned into a death trap for half a hundred miners because one of the number entered with a lighted lamp the gallery he had been warned against. n.o.body survived to explain the explosion of the dynamite-cartridge factory in Pennsylvania, but as that type of disaster almost always is due to heedlessness, it is probable that this instance is not an exception to the rule.

--Wolstan Dixey: _Mind Your Business_.

EXERCISES

_A._ Which sentences make the general statements, and which furnish specific instances, in the following paragraphs?

My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy.

Another traveler, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever pointed pencil, the cataract was made to thunder. In a little talk which we had together, he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as to widen the American falls, and contract those of the Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who declared that, upon the whole, the sight was worth looking at; there certainly was an immense water power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the n.o.ble stone works of Lockport, where the Grand Ca.n.a.l is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horseshoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down--down-- down--struck upon the fragment of the Table Rock.

--Hawthorne: _My Visit to Niagara_.

No wonder he learned English quickly, for he was ever on the alert--no strange word escaped him, no unusual term. He would say it over and over till he met a friend, and then demand its meaning. One day he came to me with a very troubled face. "Madame," he said, "please tell me why shall a man, like me, like any man, be a 'bluenose'?"

"A what?" I asked.

"A 'bluenose.' So he was called in the restaurant, but he seemed not offended about it. I have looked in my books; I can't find any disease of that name."

With ill-suppressed laughter I asked, "Do you know Nova Scotia and Newfoundland?"

"I hear the laugh in your voice," he said; then added, "Yes, I know both these places."

"They are very cold and foggy and wet," I explained.

But with brightening eyes he caught up the sentence and continued:

"And the people have blue noses, eh? Ha! ha! Excuse me, then, but is a milksop a man from some state, or some country, too?"

At tea some one used the word "claptrap." "What's that?" quickly demanded the student in our midst. "'Claptrap'--'clap' is so (he struck his hands together); 'trap' is for rats--what is, then, 'claptrap'?"

"It is a vulgar or unworthy bid for applause," I explained.

"Bah!" he contemptuously exclaimed. "I know him,--that cheap actor who plays at the gallery. He is, then, in English a 'clap-trapper,' is he not?"

It was hardly possible to meet him without having a word or a term offered thus for explanation.

--Clara Morris: _Alessandro Salvini_ ("McClure's").