Red lights were displayed in a peculiar succession, which warned of impending storm. (No antecedent.)
To make the reference of pronouns, personal and relative, distinct, the antecedent must be made prominent; sometimes the only way out of the difficulty is a repetition of the antecedent. And the pronoun should stand near the word to which it refers. Keep associated ideas together.
[225] Like pronouns in the uncertainty of their reference are participles. Either the subject is not expressed, or it is uncertain.
Hastening up the steps, the door opened. (None.)
Coming from the spring, with a pail of water in either hand, he saw her for the first time. (Uncertain.)
Adverbs are sometimes placed so that they make a sentence ridiculous; and frequently their meaning is lost by being separated from the words they modify. “Only” is a word to be watched. Like adverbs are correlative conjunctions. They are frequently so placed that they do not join the elements they were intended to unite.
He seized the young girl as she rose from the water almost roughly.
I think I hardly shall.
I only went as far as the gate.
“Who shall say, of us who know only of rest and peace by toil and strife?”
He not only learned algebra readily but also Latin.
Phrases and clauses may lose their reference by being removed from the words they modify.
Toiling up the hill, he arrived at Hotel Bellevue through a drizzling rain.
Addison rose to a post which dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honor to fill without high birth, and with little property.
“Fred was liked well; but he had the habit of that class that cannot get the English Language in the right order when a little excited.”
All the classes of errors which have been exemplified here are due to the infringement of one rule: things that belong together in thought should stand [226] together in composition. Nothing should be allowed to come between a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb, a correlative, a phrase, or a clause, and the word it modifies. Sometimes other modifiers have to be taken into account: where more than one word or phrase modifies the same word, a trial will have to be made to arrange them so that there shall be no obscurity or absurdity. Keep related ideas together; keep unrelated ideas apart.
Parallel Construction. The second principle which helps to make the relation of parts clear is parallel construction. It has already been explained in paragraphs. In sentences the commonest errors are in linking an infinitive with a gerund, a participle with a verb, an active with a passive voice, a phrase with a clause. The result is sentences like the following:—