insignificant in another, much of the writer's study is naturally devoted to placing elements where they will have just the stress intended, whether weighty or slight. To preclude Ambiguity. - Ambiguity, as has been defined earlier,1 is the suggestion of two possible meanings, between which the reader's mind is left uncertain. It may come about through the choice of a word faulty in meaning; oftener, however, it is incurred by faulty collocation of elements. The cases most requiring watchfulness against ambiguity are here given. 22. Of single words, the one that requires most care in placing, and that is oftenest misplaced, is only. The difficulty arises from the fact that only may be equally well attached to substantives, adjectives, verbs, or adverbs; to words, phrases, and clauses; and so if it is separated from its principal, something that can usurp its relation is almost sure to intervene. It is true that the word is so often misplaced that readers adjust it mentally to the modification intended; but this is no reason for placing it carelessly; as a rule it should be placed, if possible, immediately before the word or construction to which it belongs. EXAMPLES. 66 Daddy was only good when he was happy; and at other times he dipped recklessly into vices which would have been the ruin of them all had they been persistent.”2 ."2 Strictly, this means Daddy was no more than good; that is, the word "good" has usurped its attachment; the order should be "only when he was happy," the only being immediately before the phrase it modifies. Sometimes the word only is used with an intended backward reference; and this it can have when nothing comes after to steal it; as "standing room only." Notice the ambiguity of the following: "New Huguenot churches are springing up on all sides, often in places where Protestant worship has been abolished for over two hundred years. In two departments of central France only forty-five villages have since January besought the 1 See above, under Qualities of Style, pp. 31, 32. Huguenot societies for regular Protestant services."1 The word alone is used for such cases. 23. Peculiarly liable to ambiguity are what may be termed the swivel particles, such adverbs as at least, at all events, perhaps, indeed, in fact; because, as their office is to set off sentence-members, they are apt to come between two emphatic elements, where their influence may be reckoned either backward or forward. Accordingly, they should always be tested for ambiguity before their place is finally decided upon. EXAMPLES. "I think you will find my Latin exercise, at all events, as good as my cousin's." Does this mean, "My Latin exercise, at all events, I think," etc., or, "as good as my cousin's, at all events"? Either of these orders would be unambiguous. "Disturbance was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive slaves in various parts of the North." Better: “Not infrequently, indeed, disturbance was caused,” etc. 24. A modifying phrase, like a modifying word, is either an adjective or an adverb; and in placing it a test should be made that no substantive comes in to steal the adjectival relation, no verb (or adverb, or participle, or adjective) to steal the adverbial. This is especially important where several phrases have to be grouped round one central attachment. No rule can be laid down for the relative order of phrases except to be watchful of the interior of phrases for words that may form a new nucleus of modification; it is carelessness in this regard that produces the most ludicrous effects in collocation. EXAMPLES. — 1. Of an intervening noun. "And worst of all, the heavy pall hangs over all the land of Birmingham smoke, which, with a northerly wind, blots all the color out of the country, turns the blue sky to a dull brown, makes dusky shadows under the elm tops, and hides the distance in a thin veil of London fog." Here the part between the noun and its genitival phrase contains a word ("land") that produces confusion; it might be read "land of Birmingham smoke.” — A question of stress comes up here which will be adverted to later; see page 246, 29. 1 From a newspaper. 2. Of intervening phrases containing verbs. "Base-ball managers must look at this pleasant weather and think of the opportunity they have let slip to fill their coffers to overflowing with anything but pleasure." Here the attachment of the last phrase is meant for "think," but it seems to belong to "fill," a verb that has slipped into an intervening phrase. The same faults are seen in the following: "Sir Morton Peto spoke of the notion that the national debt might be repudiated with absolute contempt." People have been crying out that Germany never could be an aggressive power a great deal too soon." "It is curious to see how very little is said on the subject treated in the present essay, by the great writers on jurisprudence." 66 25. In making up sentences of principal and dependent clauses, the writer should note how far the influence of such particles as if, unless, though, that, while, whereas, and the like extends; they may by the conjunction and have the range of more than one clause, and need to be arrested if such range is not intended. The rule is to keep the principal assertions and the dependent clauses clearly separate from one another. ... EXAMPLES. "The lesson intended to be taught by these manoeuvres will be lost, if the plan of operations is laid down too definitely beforehand, and the affair degenerates into a mere review." Is the coördinate here "the lesson will be lost . . . and the affair degenerates,” that is, two principal assertions paired together, or, "if the plan . . . and [if] the affair," etc.? Put the if-clause first, and one sense of the sentence is made clear, the principal assertions being by themselves; put the word so or thus in place of the bracketed if above, and the influence of the if is arrested. 66 - 'Our critics appear to be fascinated by the quaintness of our public, as the world is when our beast-garden has a new importation of magnitude, and the creature's appetite is reverently consulted." Here the influence of as is not properly arrested at the beginning of the next clause. A that-clause within a that-clause is apt to give trouble; e.g. "Some faint elements of reason being discernible in the brute, it is not enough to prove that a process is not a process of reason, that something approaching to it is seen in the brute." Here a recast is needed, beginning, "The fact that something approaching reason . . . is not enough," etc. To concentrate Stress. For every element in the sentence there is an ordinary or typical position, where it performs its 1 MEREDITH, Essay on Comedy, p. 99. function principal or subordinate without attracting special attention to itself. The problem how to concentrate stress on any such element is therefore merely some form of the problem how and where to remove it from its regular position; to the solution of which problem it is necessary not only to know what is normal, what unusual in an element's position, but also to have a cultivated sense of the effect of every smallest change in placement. This cannot come by any formal theory; it must be a tact. 26. The natural position of the simple adjective is before its noun. This order of collocation is so well established that "marked divergencies arrest the attention, and have, by reason of their exceptional character, a force that may be converted into a useful rhetorical effect." The occasional putting of the adjective after the noun, "one of the traces which early French culture has left on our literature," is a grace of style in cases where the noun has been sufficiently emphasized and can afford to throw the stress on the modification. When there is a group of adjectives, or when the adjective is modified by a phrase, the place after the noun is quite natural. EXAMPLES. - It will be seen in the following examples how the interest centres in the quality rather than in the thing qualified. "But at last, and even here, it seemed as if the years of this loyal and eager poet had felicities too many."-"Having been successively subject to all these influences, our language has become as it were a sort of centre to which beauties the most opposite converge." In this latter example the adjunct of the adjective makes its position after the noun more nearly a matter of In the next example the noun is already so taken for granted that all the interest centres rather in its adjectives, which accordingly take the stress place: "The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and hands freely upon the men, as so many 'brutes'; it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus."1 course. 1 DR. JOHN BROWN, Rab and his Friends. 27. When, besides the adjective, the noun has belonging to it an article, demonstrative, or possessive, the position of this latter is next the adjective, with at most an adverb between. There is a tendency, due to recent German influence, to encumber the adjective with adjuncts of its own, tion which packs away material into an unobtrusive position, but produces a lumbering effect unfriendly to free movement and ease. a construc EXAMPLES. "I have now travelled through nearly every Department in France, and I do not remember ever meeting with a dirty bed: this, I fear, cannot be said of our happily in all other respects cleaner island.". “A young man, with some tints of academical training, and some of the livid lights of a then only incipient Rationalism on his mind.” In these sentences the endeavor to introduce qualifying matter in a non-emphatic place is praiseworthy, but the place makes it seem like dead weight. 28. The single-word adverb is unemphatic before its verb and emphatic after it; according to the stress needed, therefore, the adverb can be placed at will. An adverbial phrase, coming as it does naturally after its verb, is stressed by being placed at the beginning of the sentence or clause. EXAMPLES. 1. In the following sentence the adverb, while important, is not emphatic: "Each man gains a power of realizing and firmly conceiving those things he habitually deals with, and not other things." Here the stress-word is the verb. 2. Compare now the effect of placing the adverb after the verb: "He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he feels vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose," etc. Here the adverb is the strong element; strong enough in one instance ("forcibly ") to stand alone in its clause. 3. In the following the two positions are taken alternately, with the stress thereby shifted: "There is a plot to humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me, Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I know it to be true."1 1 MEREDITH, Evan Harrington, Chap. xxx. |