Читать книгу Composition-Rhetoric - Stratton D. Brooks - Страница 20

A. The first step in acquiring knowledge is to determine what it is that we do not know. Just which word or words in each of the following sentences keep you from understanding the full meaning of the sentence? Notice that a dictionary definition will not always make the meaning clear.

1. It is really more scientific to repeat a quotation from a political speech correctly, or to pass on a story undistorted, than it is to know of the rings of Saturn or the striation of diatoms.

2. The process of testing a hypothesis requires great caution in order to prevent mistakes.

3. The aërial foliage stem is the most favorable for studying stem structure.

4. Taken collectively, isotherms indicate the distribution of mean temperature over the region embraced in the map.

5. Vibrations of the membrane of the tympanum are "damped" by the ossicles of the middle ear, which also receive and pass on the auditory tremors to the membrane closing the oval window.

6. In the battle which followed, the mobile Roman legion, arranged in open order three ranks deep, proved its superiority over the massive Macedonian phalanx.

7. The narrow and dissected forms have been attributed to the scarcity of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the water.

B. Make a list of words in your lessons in other subjects for to-day that you need to look up in order to understand the lessons. This should be done daily, whether assigned or not.

34. +Choice of Words Adapted to the Reader.+—Words familiar to the reader should be used. Since the reader's ability to understand the thought of a paragraph depends to some extent upon his understanding of the words employed, it is necessary for the writer to choose words that will be understood by those whom he addresses. Of course we cannot tell whether a particular word will be understood by our readers, but, in case there is doubt, it is well to substitute one that is more likely to be understood. When you have written anything, it is well to ask yourself the question, Have I used words with which the reader is probably familiar?

+Theme XV.+—Write a theme about one of the following subjects, using words that you think will be understood by your readers:—

1. How we breathe. 2. How to make a kite. 3. The causes of the seasons. 4. Why wood floats on water. 5. The use of baking powder. 6. The difference between arithmetic and algebra.

(Have you said what you meant to say? Have you used words that your reader will understand? Find your longest sentence. Is its meaning clear? Notice the short sentences. Should some of them be united into a longer one?)

+35. Word Selection.+—There are many shades of meaning which differ but little, and a careful writer will select just the word that best conveys his thought. The reader needs to be no less careful in determining the exact meaning that the writer intends to convey. Exercises in synonyms are thus of double importance (Section 21).

Another source of error, both in acquiring and expressing thought, arises from the confusion of similar words. Some similarity of spelling causes one word to be substituted for another. There are many words and expressions that are so often interchanged that some time may be spent with profit upon exercises in determining their correct usage. These usually consist of brief reports to the class that set forth the meanings of the words, show their uses, and illustrate their differences.

In preparing such reports, determine the meaning of the words from as many sources as are available. The usual meaning can be determined from the dictionary. A fuller treatment is given in some dictionaries in a chapter on faulty diction. Additional material may be found in many of the text-books on rhetoric, and in special books treating of word usage. After you are sure that you know the correct use, prepare a report for the class that shall make that use clear to others. In the simplest form this will consist of definitions and sentences in which the words are correctly used. The following examples, handed in by pupils, will serve to illustrate such reports:—

1. A council is an assembly of persons convened for consultation or deliberation. Counsel is used to indicate either (1) an opinion as the result of consultation or (2) a lawyer engaged to give advice or to act as advocate in court. Lewis furnishes the following example of the use of these two words: "The plaintiff's counsel held a council with his partners in law, and finally gave him as his best counsel the advice that he should drop the suit; but, as Swift says, 'No man will take counsel, but every man will take money,' and the plaintiff refused to accept the advice unless the counsel could persuade the defendant to settle the case out of court by paying a large sum."

2. The correct meaning of transpire may perhaps be best understood by considering its derivations. It comes from trans, through, and spiro, to breathe, from which it gets its meaning, to escape gradually from secrecy. It is frequently used incorrectly in the sense of to happen, but both Webster and the Standard dictionary condemn this use of the word. The latter says that it is often so misused especially in carelessly edited newspapers, as in "Comments on the heart-rending disaster which transpired yesterday are unnecessary, but," etc. When transpire is correctly used, it is not a synonym of happen. A thing that happened a year ago may transpire to-day, that is, it may "become known through unnoticed channels, exhale, as it were, through invisible pores like a vapor or a gas disengaging itself." Many things which happen in school, thus become known by being passed along in a semi-secret manner until nearly all know of them though few can tell just how the information was spread. Transpire may properly be applied to such a diffusion of knowledge.

+Theme XVI.+—Report as suggested above on any one of the following groups of words:—

1. Allude, mention. 2. Beside, besides. 3. Character, reputation. 4. Degrade, demean, debase. 5. Last, latest, preceding. 6. Couple, pair. 7. Balance, rest, remainder.

(Have you made clear the correct use of the words under discussion? Can you give examples which do not follow the dictionaries so closely as do the illustrative reports above?)

NOTE.—Lists of words suitable for exercises similar to the above are given in the Appendix. The teacher will assign them to such an extent and at such times as seems desirable. One such lesson a week will be found profitable.

+36. Sentence Relations.+—What we read or hear usually consists of several sentences written or spoken together. The meaning of any particular sentence may depend upon the sentence or sentences preceding. In order to determine accurately the meaning of the whole, we must understand the relation in thought that each sentence bears to the others. Notice the two sentences: "Guns are dangerous. Boys should not use them." Though the last sentence is independent, it gets its meaning from the first.

In the following selection consider each sentence apart from the others. Notice that the meaning of the whole becomes intelligible only when the sentences are considered in their relations to each other.

Once upon a time, a notion was started, that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occasion. When the time came, everybody had his ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of Boo—the word agreed upon—that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fiji Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation.—Holmes.

Gutenberg did a great deal of his work in secret, for he thought it was much better that his neighbors should know nothing of what he was doing. So he looked for a workshop where no one would be likely to find him. He was now living in Strasburg, and there was in that city a ruined old building where, long before his time, a number of monks had lived. There was one room in the building which needed only a little repairing to make it fit to be used. So he got the right to repair the room and use it as his workshop.

In all good writing we find a similar dependence in thought. Each sentence takes a meaning because of its relation to some other. The personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives, adverbial phrases indicating time or place, conjunctions, and such expressions as certainly, however, on the other hand, etc., are used to indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ambiguity. Care must be taken to use them so as to keep the meaning clear, and your own good sense will help you in this more than rules. Notice in your reading how frequently expressions similar to those mentioned above are used.

+Theme XVII.+—Write a theme suggested by one of the following subjects:—

1. The last quarter. 2. An excursion with the physical geography class. 3. What I saw while riding to town. 4. The broken bicycle. 5. An hour in the study hall. 6. Seen from my study window.

(Are your sentences so arranged that the relation in thought is clear? Are the personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives used so as to avoid ambiguity? Does your story relate real events or imaginary ones? If imaginary events are related, have you made them seem probable?)

+37. Getting the Main Thought.+—In many cases the relation in thought is not directly indicated, and we are left to determine it from the context, just as we decide upon the meaning of a word because of what precedes or follows it. In this case the meaning of a particular sentence may be made clear if we have in mind the main topic under discussion. Many pupils fail in recitations because they do not distinguish that which is more important from that which is less so. If a dozen pages of history are assigned, they cannot master the lesson because it is too long to be memorized, and they are not able to select the three or four things of importance with which it is really concerned. Thirty or forty minor details are jumbled together without any clear knowledge of the relations that they bear either to one another or to the main thoughts of the lesson.

In the following selection but three things are discussed. Determine what they are, but not what is said about them.

In all the ages the extent and value of flood plains have been increased by artificial means. Dikes or levees are built to regulate the spread and flow of the water and to protect the land from destructive floods. Dams and reservoirs are constructed for the storage of water, which is led by a system of canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may become as productive as that of the Nile.

Streams are the easiest routes of travel and commerce. A river usually furnishes from its mouth well up toward its source a smooth, graded highway, upon which a cargo may be transported with much less effort than overland. If obstructions occur in the form of rapids or falls, boat and cargo are carried around them. It is often easy to pass by a short portage or "carry" from one stream system across the divide to another. In regions which are not very level the easiest grades in every direction are found along the streams, and the main routes of land travel follow the stream valleys. In traversing a mountainous region, a railroad follows the windings of some river up to the crest of the divide, which it crosses through a pass, or often by a tunnel, and descends the valley of some stream on the other side.

Man is largely indebted to streams for the variety and beauty of scenery. Running water itself is attractive to young and old. A landscape without water lacks its chief charm. A child instinctively finds its way to the brook, and the man seeks beside the river the pleasure and recreation which no other place affords. Streams have carved the surface of the land into an endless variety of beautiful forms, and a land where stream valleys are few or shallow is monotonous and tiresome. The most common as well as the most celebrated beauty of scenery in the world, from the tiny meanders of a meadow brook to the unequaled grandeur of the Colorado canyons, is largely due to the presence and action of streams.

—Dryer: Lessons in Physical Geography.

In the above selection we find that each group of sentences is related to some main topic. A more extended observation of good writing will give the same result. Men naturally think in sentence groups. A group of sentences related to each other and to the central idea is called a +paragraph.+

+38. Topic Statement.+—In the three paragraphs of the selection on page 67, notice that the first sentence in each tells what the paragraph is about. In a well-written paragraph it is possible to select the phrase or sentence that states the main thought. If such a sentence does not occur in the paragraph itself, one can be framed that will express clearly and concisely the chief idea of the paragraph. This brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of a paragraph is called the topic statement.

In order to master the thought of what we read we must be able to select or to make the successive topic statements, and in order to express our own thoughts clearly we must write our paragraphs so that our readers may easily grasp the topic statement of each.

When expressed in the paragraph, the topic statement may be a part of a sentence, a whole sentence, or it may extend through two sentences. It is usual to place the topic statement first, but it may be preceded by one or more introductory sentences, or even withheld until the end of the paragraph. For emphasis it may be repeated, though usually in a slightly different form.