A First Book in Writing English

by Edwin Herbert Lewis

Here the writer has not committed the comma fault; he has not begun an independent sentence after a comma. But he has set down ideas irrelevant to the sentence, and, in this case, irrelevant even to the theme.

This lack of unity often arises from putting down, as the sentence proceeds, the details that occur parenthetically to the writer; he empties his mind upon the paper. Thus:—

My aunt happened to notice, as she stood looking into the glass and thinking how pretty she was, for she was really pretty for one so old, that the eyes of a portrait or one of the eyes was moving, for my aunt had a large picture of my uncle in her room in her country-house, which was in Derbyshire.

B. Many a sentence which ends in an irrelevant clause can be made to show unity by the insertion of some intermediate link that occurred in the mind but was overlooked in the writing. “Johnson wrote political articles, and took care that the Whigs did not get the best of it,” becomes a unit if we supply a few words: “Johnson wrote political articles, and in those which referred to parliamentary debates took care that the Whigs did not get the best of it.” In other words, a sentence must not merely include the expressed parts of a main thought, as in the second kind of unity of substance; it must express every part of the main thought.

Oral Exercise.—Trim the following sentences into shape, so that each shall be a unit. If necessary, divide the sentence.

1. He was young; but his foolishness stood him in good stead.

2. The cholera in Egypt is assuming a more loathsome form, among the dead being Major Roddy Owen, the famous Uganda explorer.

3. The delegates, wearied by the excitement of the past week, have hurried to their homes, a few remaining for all the business men have been making unusual displays in spite of the hard times.

4. The new light is placed upon a gas-jet, which supplies the gas to a curious film, which is made of some chemically prepared substance that becomes incandescent, not having to be changed oftener than twice a year, if you are careful with it.