35. Emphasis in the paragraph. With regard to emphasis, the important thing for the writer to remember is that the naturally emphatic positions in the paragraph are the beginning and the end. In these positions, therefore, should be placed those details to which attention is to be especially called.

What particular detail should be placed at the beginning and what at the end, will depend upon the circumstances of the case. Other things being equal, however, the end will give more emphasis to a point than the beginning. Hence the clue to emphasis in the paragraph lies mainly in the management of the conclusion. Effective devices for making the conclusion emphatic are the employment of a short, summarizing sentence at the end; restatement of the topic, either in the same or in other words; and inversion, or arranging the sentences of the paragraph in such a way as to bring the topic sentence last. Examples of these devices are given below:

(1) Ending a short summarizing sentence:

So talks the sender with noise and deliberation. It is the Morse code working ordinary dots and dashes which can be made into letters and words, as everybody knows. With each movement of the key bluish sparks jump an inch between the two brass knobs of the induction coil, the same kind of coil and the same kind of sparks that are familiar in experiments with the Roentgen rays. For one dot, a single spark jumps; for one dash there comes a stream of sparks. One knob of the induction coil is connected with the earth, the

other with the wire hanging from the masthead. Each spark indicates a certain oscillating impulse from the electrical battery that actuates the coil; each one of these impulses shoots through the aërial space by oscillations of the ether, traveling at the speed of light, or seven times around the earth in a second. That is all there is in the sending of these Marconi messages. 1

1

(2) Ending a restatement of the topic:

Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning, if we determine to begin with proof. We shall ever be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into textuaries. We shall never get at our first principles. Resolve to believe nothing, and you must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, sinking further and further, and finding "in the lowest depth a lower deep," till you come to the broad bosom of scepticism. I would rather be bound to defend the reasonableness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demonstrate a moral governance from the physical world. Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith.2

(3) Ending a placing of the topic sentence last:

3

The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was infallible. We may rely upon it that we shall not improve upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of poetry;

1 From an article by Cleveland Moffett in McClure's Magazine. 2 From Newman's Discussions and Arguments.

3 Matthew Arnold, from whose essay on Wordsworth this example is taken, had remarked in the preceding paragraph that Wordsworth's classification of his poems is ingenious but far-fetched.

that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two categories a poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a predominant note, which determines the poem as belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the best proof of the value of the classification, and of the advantage of adhering to it. Wordsworth's poems will never produce their due effect until they are freed from their present artificial arrangement, and grouped more naturally.

EXERCISES

1. Criticise the paragraph structure of some article you have read in the current magazines on the score of (a) unity, (b) coherence, (c) proportion.

'2. A study of the paragraphing in one of Macaulay's essays. 3. Develop the following paragraph topics in such a way as to produce a coherent theme on the subject, College spirit:

a. What college spirit is.

b. Ways in which it may properly manifest itself.

c. Its value, both to the student and to the college.

4. Read Lectures II and III in Carlyle's Heroes and HeroWorship and write a review of them, using the following as paragraph topics:

a. Carlyle's conception of a hero.

b. His distinction between th hero as prophet and the hero as poet.

c. His typical hero-prophet.

d. His examples of the hero as poet.

SUGGESTED SUBJECTS FOR THEMES

1. Some of the discomforts of city life.

2. Some of my favorite books and why I like them.

3. Reporting for a newspaper.

4. On faultfinding.

5. True and false patriotism.

6. The value of class contests.

7. Manners show the man.

8. A scene at a lunch-counter. 9. My highest ambition.

10. A ghost story.

II. A good joke.

12. A narrow escape.

13. The habit of observing things.

14. Questionable amusements.

15. On neglecting little things.

16. Every man should try to do one thing well.

17. Can a man ever tell the whole truth?

18. A comm nt upon Ruskin's "Of King's Treasuries" (see Sesame and Lilies).

19. The characterization in Stevenson's Kidnapped.

36. Definition.

CHAPTER IV

THE SENTENCE

A sentence may be defined as a group of words expressing a complete thought or idea. It is the smallest unit by means of which thought may be given complete expression. It is thus the ultimate unit of discourse; for nothing less than a sentence, or group of words expressing a complete thought, can stand alone.

37. Classification of sentences according to grammatical structure. - In its simplest form, a sentence consists of a simple subject and a simple predicate, in which case the expression of thought is limited to the mere statement of a fact without qualifications or modifications of any kind. For example: "They have gone." In the actual communication of thought in compositions, however, sentences of this kind are the exception rather than the rule. Ordinarily, ideas are much too complex to be expressed in this way. We usually find it necessary or desirable to modify our assertions, to state not merely the bald fact, but the circumstances or conditions. attendant upon the fact. Thus instead of saying, "They have gone," we might wish to state the fact as modified or enlarged upon in one of the following ways: