A First Book in Writing English

by Edwin Herbert Lewis

8. I returned to the kitchen; I made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year; I wrapped myself in my plaid; I lay down upon the chests and fell asleep.

The So Construction.—The conjunction so is a useful word, and the learner prefers it to its synonyms, therefore and consequently, because it is simpler, less formal than either. But in a narrative which is liberally besprinkled with so’s the reader feels that the simplicity is overdone. Here is an extreme example.

A short time afterward my uncle died; so my aunt went to her country-house in Derbyshire. She did not wish to be alone in the country; so she took her servants. When they got there they found the house very lonely; so the maids did not want to stay, but they did.

Examine the sentences just quoted, and show the relations between the clauses by other devices than the use of so.

So, as a conjunction, should be employed very sparingly. When it is employed, it should usually be preceded by a semicolon rather than a comma.

Oral Exercise.—A careful writer is known by his use of conjunctions: he does not use and unless the clauses joined are co-ordinate; nor but unless there is a real opposition; nor a given subordinate conjunction unless it is actually required by logic. In the subjoined selections from Ruskin the original conjunctions have been changed to those in italics. Find better expressions for those italicized.

1. In employing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible. Consequently a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer well, moreover a woman taught to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labour considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals, therefore the real and noblest function of labour is to prevent crime, but not to be Reformatory, but Formatory.—Ruskin.

2. We must spend our money in some way, at some time, accordingly it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. While we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; while we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else’s pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies for making a useless embankment, but not to pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) and not give employment of some kind; nevertheless whatever quantity of money exists, the relative quantity of employment must some day come out of it; and the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place; but every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means of life.—Ruskin.

One Coherent Structure.—We have seen that to be well-knit a sentence must have that unity of form which gives every thought its proper clause-rank. It must also be uniform in structure. There should be no sudden, unnecessary change in subject, or in the form of the verb. Sometimes a sentence is pulled about by the mind as a child by a cross nurse. It begins in the active voice, it is twitched aside into the passive. It begins as the act of one person, it ends as that of another. Even so admirable a writer as John Fiske has this sentence: “But Howe could not bear to acknowledge the defeat of his attempts to storm, and accordingly, at five o’clock, with genuine British persistency, a third attack was ordered.” This “British persistency” is evidently Howe’s. Why not give him full credit for it, thus?—“But Howe could not bear to acknowledge the defeat of his attempts to storm, and accordingly, at five o’clock, with genuine British persistency he ordered a third attack.”