The Art Of Writing And Speaking The English Language Word Study

If there is a subject of really universal interest and utility, it is the art of writing and speaking one's own language effectively. It is the basis of culture, as we all know;...

Name the first letter of the alphabet——_a_. The mouth is open and the sound may be prolonged indefinitely. It is a full, clear sound, an unobstructed vibration of the vocal chords.

English speaking peoples have been inclined to exaggerate the irregularities of the English word-formation. The fact is, only a small number of common words and roots are irregu...

There are a few rules and applications of the principles of word-formation which may be found fully treated in the chapter on “Orthography” at the beginning of the dictionary, b...

This chapter is designed to serve two practical objects: First, to aid in the correction and improvement of the pronunciation of everyday English; second, to give hints that wil...

1. Copy the story paragraph by paragraph, with great accuracy, noting every punctuation mark, paragraph indentations, numbers, and headings. Words that should appear in italics...

The first textbook on rhetoric which still remains to us was written by Aristotle. He defines rhetoric as the art of writing effectively, viewing it primarily as the art of pers...

“Diction” is derived from the Latin _dictio,_ a word, and in rhetoric it denotes choice of words. In the study of grammar we have learned that all words have logical relationshi...

It is not an easy thing to pass from the logical precision of grammar to the vague suggestiveness of words that call up whole troops of ideas not contained in the simple idea fo...

There have been many definitions of style; but the disputes of the rhetoricians do not concern us. _Style,_ as the word is commonly understood, is the choice and arrangement of...

Mere correctness in sentence structure (grammar) may be purely scientific; but the art of rhetoric is so wrapped up with human emotion that the study of human nature counts for...

I have said that humor is good-natured and winning. This is always true, though the winning of one reader may be at the expense of some other. Humor used to win one at the expen...

Macaulay and De Quincey. The familiar style of the humorist is almost universal in its availability. It is the style of conversation, to a great extent―at least of the best conv...

Reserve is a negative quality, and so it has not been emphasized by writers on composition as it ought to be. But if it is negative, it is none the less real and important, and...

The term “criticism” may appropriately be used to designate all writing in which logic predominates over emotion. The style of criticism is the style of argument, exposition, an...

In fiction there are three different kinds of writing which must be blended with a fine skill, and this fact makes fiction so much the more difficult than any other sort of writ...

A peculiarly modern style is that in which very short sentences are used for pungent effect. If to this characteristic of short sentences we add a slightly unusual though perfec...

We have all heard that the simplest style is the strongest; and no doubt most of us have wondered how this could be, as we turned over in our minds examples of what seemed to us...

A work of literary art is like a piece of music: one false note makes a discord that spoils the effect of the whole. But it is useless to give rules for writing an harmonious st...

We will now consider some of those general principles of thought end expression which are essential to distinctively literary composition; and first the relation between imagina...

We have seen how a real incident is worked over into the fundamental idea for a composition. The same principle ought to hold in the use of real persons in making the characters...

In all effective writing contrast is far more than a figure of speech: it is an essential element in making strength. A work of literary art without contrast may have all the el...