ARTICLE I—OF EMPHASIS.
EMPHASIS is the peculiar stress of voice which we lay upon some particular word or words in a sentence, which are thereby distinguished from the rest as being more especially significant.[473]
As accent enforces a syllable, and gives character to a word; so emphasis distinguishes a word, and often determines the import of a sentence. The right placing of accent, in the utterance of words, is therefore not more important, than the right placing of emphasis, in the utterance of sentences. If no emphasis be used, discourse becomes vapid and inane; if no accent, words can hardly be recognized as English.
"Emphasis, besides its other offices, is the great regulator of quantity. Though the quantity of our syllable is fixed, in words separately pronounced, yet it is mutable, when [the] words are [ar]ranged in[to] sentences; the long being changed into short, the short into long, according to the importance of the words with regard to meaning: and, as it is by emphasis only, that the meaning can be pointed out, emphasis must be the regulator of the quantity."—L. Murray's Gram., p. 246.[474] "Emphasis changes, not only the quantity of words and syllables, but also, in particular cases, the sent of the accent. This is demonstrable from the following examples: 'He shall _in_crease, but I shall _de_crease.' 'There is a difference between giving and _for_giving.' 'In this species of composition, _plaus_ibility is much more essential than _prob_ability.' In these examples, the emphasis requires the accent to be placed on syllables to which it does not commonly belong."—Ib., p. 247.
In order to know what words are to be made emphatic, the speaker or reader must give constant heed to the sense of what he utters; his only sure guide, in this matter, being a just conception of the force and spirit of the sentiment which he is about to pronounce. He must also guard against the error of multiplying emphatic words too much; for, to overdo in this way, defeats the very purpose for which emphasis is used. To manage this stress with exact propriety, is therefore one of the surest evidences both of a quick understanding, and of a delicate and just taste.
ARTICLE II.—OF PAUSES.
Pauses are cessations in utterance, which serve equally to relieve the speaker, and to render language intelligible and pleasing.
Pauses are of three kinds: first, distinctive or sentential pauses,—such as form the divisions required by the sense; secondly, emphatic or rhetorical pauses,—such as particularly call the hearer's attention to something which has been, or is about to be, uttered; and lastly, poetical or harmonic pauses,—such as are peculiar to the utterance of metrical compositions.
The duration of the distinctive pauses should be proportionate to the degree of connexion between the parts of the discourse. The shortest are long enough for the taking of some breath; and it is proper, thus to relieve the voice at every stop, if needful. This we may do, slightly at a comma, more leisurely at a semicolon, still more so at a colon, and completely at a period.
Pauses, whether in reading or in public discourse, ought always to be formed after the manner in which we naturally form them in ordinary, sensible conversation; and not after the stiff, artificial manner which many acquire at school, by a mere mechanical attention to the common punctuation.