Seward starts with the idea of stating that a whole family were foully murdered, but after commencing to express his thought, he desires to qualify it, so he halts it to interject the fact that this whole family were “just, gentle, and pure.” Were it not for the use of the parenthesis, he would have been compelled to use another sentence. Care should be exercised in using parentheses, as they tend to confuse the listener unless properly spoken.
How should a parenthesis be spoken? In order to show that the speaker has left the main idea and taken up a secondary one, he should change the pitch of the voice on leaving the main idea, or while speaking the parenthesis, and immediately resume the original pitch on resuming the main idea.
The following is a striking example of the use of parenthesis. It is a long, loose sentence, but full of information that may be better expressed in this manner than by a number of short sentences:
This great nation, filling all profitable latitudes, cradled between two oceans, with inexhaustible resources, with riches increasing in an unparalleled ratio, by agriculture, by manufactures, by commerce, with schools and churches, with books and newspaper thick as leaves in our forests, with institutions sprung from the people, and peculiarly adapted to their genius; a nation not sluggish, but active, used to excitement, practiced in political wisdom, and accustomed to self-government, and all its vast outlying parts held together by a federal government, mild in temper, gentle in administration, and beneficent in results, seemed to have been formed for peace.
—Henry Ward Beecher
The main thought consists of the short sentence, “This great nation seemed to have been formed for peace,” and all that explains its situation, its resources, and its government is parenthetical. This illustration is not cited as a good example for speakers to follow, but it is merely given to show one of the means employed by Mr. Beecher, an eloquent speaker, in expressing his ideas. The subject of the construction of sentences is dealt with at length in the chapter on Composition.
pause
Pauses should be regulated by the sense and not by grammatical punctuation. A pause is sometimes required where no mark of punctuation is placed and at times a mark of punctuation should be passed over quickly in order to not retard the conveyance of the speaker’s thought. The pauses used by the speaker, but note employed by the grammarian, are called rhetorical pauses and are used for emphasis; as,
Go, forget that you have a wife and children, to ruin, and remember only—that you have France to save.[7]
the series