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according as the writer predicates the action of himself or of some second or third person.

"The radical signification of will (Anglo-Saxon willan) is purpose, intention, determination; that of shall (Anglo-Saxon sceal, ought) is obligation." To these primary meanings we trace the rationale of usage in the different persons.

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8. Obligation imposed on self implies that what ought to be will be; hence shall, in the first person, is the simple auxiliary of the future. Imposed on others, it has the force of a command; hence, in the second and third persons, shall is the indicator of authority or necessity. Purpose or determination predicated of self has force merely for what it says; hence will, in the first person, simply indicates the writer's volition. Predicated of others it implies, by a natural courtesy, fulfilment of what is willed; hence, in the second and third persons, will is the simple auxiliary of the future.

EXAMPLES. -1. Simple future. a. Obligation become announcement: "I shall set about this work to-morrow." b. Volition implying fulfilment : "You will not go far in this course of action"; "He will be rash, if he commits himself to the uncertainties of this measure." In most cases of will with second and third persons the volitional force has entirely given place to the future.

2. Determined future. a. By the speaker's volition on himself: "I will follow up this quest, despite its hardships and perils." b. By obligation imposed on another, the determination of the speaker passing over, as it were, to the person or thing spoken to or of, thus making shall in second and third persons much like will in the first: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"; "The style shall be simple and familiar: but style is the image of character; and the habits of correct writing may produce, without labor or design, the appearance of art and study." This last was written by Gibbon concerning the style of his projected Autobiography.

Shall, with its implied obligation, may have many degrees of effect, from command or threat to mere promise. Should and would follow the same rules as shall and will.

1 Quoted from White, "Words and their Uses," p. 266. His treatment of these words, pp. 264-273, is excellent. See also, McElroy, "Structure of English Prose," pp. 108-111. Only an outline from the rhetorical point of view is given above; minutiæ of usage and exceptions must be left to grammar, where they properly belong.

9. There is a fine use of shall, with the second and third persons, as a verb of exemplification or prophecy; enough of its original sense of obligation being retained to give especial strength, certainty, or distinction to the prediction.

EXAMPLES. -"And what do we see in actual life? There shall be two men, one of whom has started on the road of self-improvement from a mainly intellectual interest .; the other has begun with some sense of God, and of his relation to Him," etc. .-"You shall hear the same persons say that 'George Barnwell' is very natural, and 'Othello' is very natural, that they are both very deep; and to them they are the same kind of thing."

Participles. The participial construction is a convenient. means of condensation; it also promotes flexibility of style by obviating the too constant recurrence of principal verbs. Being, however, a subordinated construction, it needs careful adjustment to the principal assertion on which it depends.

10. A frequent error of hasty writers is what is called the "misrelated participle," that is, a participle employed without clear indication of the word to which it belongs. Whenever a participial construction is used, the exact noun or pronoun to which the participle is attached should appear, in an unambiguous position.

EXAMPLES. "Being exceedingly fond of birds, an aviary is always to be found in the grounds." Here there is no clue to the person or persons fond of birds, and the only word to which the participle may be grammatically attached is" aviary."

"While visiting St. Louis with him (General Grant) while he was President, he made a characteristic remark showing how little his thoughts dwelt upon those events of his life which made such a deep impression upon others." Here the writer meant "When I was visiting St. Louis," etc.

When a participial construction constitutes the first part of a sentence, the word in the second part to which it relates is generVally the subject and takes the chief place; sometimes, however, when there is no reasonable danger of ambiguity, it may have a place and office less prominent, though not remain unexpressed. EXAMPLE. From Southey: "Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have gained; for, having also something better in view, and never,

therefore, having courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has not been possible for me to lay by anything."

11. The participial construction is generally equivalent to a clause; and whenever the omission would cause ambiguity or vagueness, the conjunctional relation of the clause should be retained with the participle.

EXAMPLE. 66 - Republics, in the first instance, are never desired for their own sakes. I do not think they will finally be desired at all, unaccompanied by courtly graces and good breeding." Here there is doubt whether the meaning is, "because [they are] unaccompanied," or "if [they are] unaccompanied," a doubt which should be precluded by retaining the conjunction proper to the clause.

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Infinitives. Errors in modifying infinitives, and in managing series of infinitives, are the most frequent.

12. The infinitive should not be divided by an adverb between the preposition to and the verb. The adverb belongs to the whole expression, and should therefore stand either before or after, not in the midst of it.

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EXAMPLES. (Quoted from A. S. Hill's Rhetoric.) "He's not the man to tamely acquiesce." - "To an active mind it may be easier to bear along all the qualifications of an idea, and at once rightly form it when named, than to first imperfectly conceive such idea."

13. Where several infinitives occur together, the word on which each one depends is to be made obvious. Care in this respect is made necessary by the fact that an infinitive following another may with equal correctness be either subordinate to or coördinate with the other; its office and rank should therefore be evident.

NOTE. One or two aids to clearness may be mentioned. Two infinitives coördinate with each other may be closely connected by omitting the preposition to with the second. The dependence of infinitives may often be made. obvious, while the sense also is made clearer, by distinguishing between the infinitive of sequence (to) and the infinitive of purpose (in order to).

The following, with its comment, is taken from Abbott's "How to Write Clearly." "He said that he wished to take his friend with him to visit the capital and to study medicine.' Here it is doubtful whether the meaning is

'He said that he wished to take his friend with him, (1) and also to visit the capital and study medicine,' or (2) 'that his friend might visit the capital and might also study medicine,' or (3) 'on a visit to the capital, and that he also wished to study medicine.'" If in the above examples we adopt the two aids mentioned, the sentence becomes, "He said that he wished to take his friend with him in order to visit the capital and study medicine," which gives clear sense in one aspect. For other senses it may be necessary to use that for to, or to insert conjunctions.

II. COLLOCATION.

The English syntax, being devoid of the aid that inflection would give in showing the relation of words, is all the more dependent on order and collocation. It depends on these first of all for clearness; for a qualifying element may have its attachment either in what precedes or in what follows, and often, if carelessly placed, may with equal reason be counted in either direction. A frequent problem, therefore, is, how to remove ambiguity and give the modifier unmistakably the connection intended. The requirements of force, also, have their problems; for the same element may be emphatic in one position and comparatively insignificant in another. And the question how to give an idea force according to its importance is for the most part a question of position.

To secure both clearness and distinction it is imperative that words, phrases, and clauses grammatically connected should be placed as near together as possible, or, if separated, that they should make up in prominence for what they lose in proximity.

Placing of Words. — The prevailing problem in the collocation of words is the problem of emphasis - how to place a word so that it shall have its proper distinction or lack of distinction, according to its significance.

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14. The natural position of the simple adjective is before its This order of collocation is so well established that "marked divergencies arrest the attention, and have, by reason of their exceptional character, a force which may be converted into a useful rhetorical effect." Accordingly, inversion of the natural order may on occasion be " proper to poetry and high style; and it is

one of the traces which early French culture has left on our

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NOTE. The placing of the adjective by inversion after its noun gives it a prominence above the noun; that is, the interest centres in the quality rather than in the thing qualified. This may be seen in examples like the following. 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." "But at last, and even here, it seemed as if the years of this loyal and eager poet had felicities too many."

Hence we find the adjective following its noun sometimes when, by repetition or otherwise, the noun is already so prominently before the reader's attention as to need no stress, and when the stress is of use in multiplying qualities; as in the following, from Dr. John Brown:

"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."

15. The position of the article, demonstrative pronoun, or possessive, is immediately before the adjective, with at most an adverb between. There is a tendency, however, due to recent German influence, to encumber the adjective with adjuncts of its own, so that " we not unfrequently find a second adverb, or an adverbial phrase, or a negative, included in the interval between the article or pronoun and the substantive." This structure is not fully naturalized, and is in itself so cumbrous that the attitude of suspicion toward it is safest.

EXAMPLES. "The, I believe of Eastern derivation, monosyllable ‘Bosh.'' This sentence, from Thackeray, would probably not have been justified by him in any but the most familiar style. — The following is from a book on Brittany: "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."

1 Earle, "Philology of the English Tongue," p. 520.

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