Oral Exercise.—Consider the following paragraph, and decide whether the main thoughts of it are nine, as here indicated, or four. If four, the thoughts are: (1) Contrast between light above and dark below. (2) The growing dark. (3) The faint, weird sights and sounds that come to the narrator. (4) His retreat from the abbey. If, having given the matter careful thought, you think there should be but four sentences, or if you think there is any other fault in the punctuation, explain how you would repoint.
The last beams of day were now faintly streaming through the painted windows in the high vaults above me. The lower parts of the abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows. The marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light. The evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave. And even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poet’s Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning’s walk. And as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole building with echoes.
Punctuation for Emphasis.—Below are given three ways of punctuating the same words. We may suppose the same words to be used by three different generals.
1. General A. twirled his moustache, and spoke softly, in his calm, unruffled way, as if he were explaining a mathematical problem to a cadet; he said to the soldier, “You are a coward: you shrink, you dodge, you hide, you run away when the danger comes.” He spoke meditatively, and with a little drawl, letting his voice rise at each pause.
2. General B. looked at the soldier steadily, and said in a sharp, decided tone: “You are a coward: you shrink; you dodge; you hide; you run away when the danger comes.”
3. General C. sprang up from his camp-stool, angry and indignant. He spoke explosively and incoherently. “You are a coward! You shrink. You dodge. You hide. You run away when the danger comes.”
Evidently the punctuation here is largely dependent on the different states of mind. A calm, logical attitude is reflected in the nice distinctions conveyed by the colon and comma. An excited mood over-emphasizes each detail, and makes it a sentence. There is sometimes need of indignant emphasis on each detail. Perhaps therefore the strict unity of the sentence may sometimes be sacrificed for the sake of emphasis. Such a sacrifice however should very rarely be made.
Oral Exercise.—Consider the following paragraph as a whole, and decide whether the sentences represent the main factors of the paragraph-thought. If you agree that “the song of a young girl’s voice” is as important in the paragraph as several of the other songs put together, how can this importance be indicated by punctuation?
The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars, high and sharp against the rosy dawn. And St. Brandan’s Isle reflected double in the still broad silver sea. The wind sung softly in the cedars, and the water sung among the caves. The sea-birds sung as they streamed out into the ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the boughs. And the air was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and his hermits, as they slumbered in the shade. And they moved their good old lips, and sung their good old hymn amid their dreams. But among all the songs one came across the water more sweet and clear than all, for it was the song of a young girl’s voice.