Conventions of Composition. Moreover, there are imposed upon a writer certain established rules which he must follow. He must spell words correctly, and he must use correctly marks of punctuation. These things need not annoy a speaker; yet they are conditions which must be obeyed by a writer. A man who eats with a knife may succeed in getting his food to his mouth, yet certain conventions exclude such a [3] person from polite society. So in composition, it is possible for a person to make himself understood, though he write “alright” instead of “all right,” and never use a semicolon; still, such a person could hardly be considered a highly cultured writer. To express one’s thoughts correctly and with refinement requires absolute obedience to the common conventions of good literature.
The study of composition includes, first, the careful selection of materials and their effective arrangement; and second, a knowledge of the established conventions of literature: of spelling; of the common uses of the marks of punctuation,—period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, semicolon, comma; of the common idioms of our language; and of the elements of its grammar. From the beginning of the high school course, the essay, the paragraph, the sentence, the word, are to be studied with special attention to the effective use of each in adequately communicating ideas.
Five Forms of Discourse. All written composition may be arranged in two classes, or groups. The first group will include all composition that deals with actual happenings and real things; the second, all that deals with abstract thoughts and spiritual ideas. The first will include narration and description; the second, exposition, argument, and persuasion. All literature, then, may be separated into five classes,—narration, description, exposition, argument, and persuasion.
Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look. Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances. Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon a proposition. Exposition explains; argument [4] convinces; persuasion arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the five forms of discourse.
Definitions. Narration is that form of discourse which recounts events in a sequence. It includes stories, novels, romances, biographies, some books of travel, and some histories.
Description is that form of discourse which aims to present a picture. It seldom occurs alone, but it is usually found in combination with the other forms of discourse.
Exposition is that form of discourse which seeks to explain a term or a proposition. Text-books, books of information, theses, most histories, many magazine articles, and newspaper leaders are of this class of literature.
Argument is that form of discourse which has for its object the proof of the truth or falsity of a proposition.
Persuasion is that form of discourse the purpose of which is to influence the will.
Difficulty in distinguishing. Though these definitions seem to set apart the great classes of literature, and to insure against any danger of confusion, it is not always easy to place individual pieces of literature in one of these divisions. Whittier’s “Barbara Frietchie” and Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” are narrative beyond any question; but what about “Snow-Bound” and “Travels with a Donkey” by the same authors? Are they narration or description? In them the narrative and descriptive portions are so nearly equal that one hesitates to set them down to either class; the reader is constantly called from beautiful pictures to delightful stories. The narrative can easily be separated from the descriptive portions; but when this has been [5] done, has it been decided whether the whole piece is narration or description?