1. Style is that part of Rhetoric which treats of the mode of expression.

Note 1. Any verbal expression of thought, even in its lowest and plainest forms, brings us within the domain of Grammar. But, beyond the bare expression of the meaning, we can conceive of it as being uttered awkwardly or elegantly, plainly or figuratively, concisely or diffusely, and in a great variety of other ways; and the consideration of these various methods of expression takes us at once beyond the region of Grammar, and brings us into that of Rhetoric.

Note 2. Style is sometimes used in a more restricted sense, namely, to indicate certain special kinds of writing and speaking. But there is no necessity for limiting the meaning of the word in this way. Webster very properly defines Style to be the "mode of expressing thought in language, whether oral or written," and in this broad sense the word is used in the present treatise.

Note 3. The word Style comes from the Latin stylus, a small steel instrument used by the Romans for writing on waxen tablets. The stylus was to the Roman writer what the pen is to us, and became, by an easy metaphor, the means of expressing any one's method of composition, just as we now, by a like metaphor, speak of a gifted pen, a ready pen, meaning thereby a gifted or à ready author.

Note 4. Style is concerned equally with Prose and Poetry, and with the various figures of speech which are common to both; it is coextensive with the whole range of composition and of discourse, both oral and written. To find out what to say is the business of Invention; but the moulding of the materials thus furnished belongs to Style. It includes in its scope whatever, in the arts and contrivances of speech, can make the expression of thought more effective. In its lower forms, it treats of Punctuation and the use of Capitals, and of other contrivances of a mechanical sort, which help to give clearness to the meaning, while in its higher forms it enters upon the region of the Imagination and the Passions, and deals with questions of Taste and Fancy.

2. The various topics included in Style are discussed under the following heads: 1, PUNCTUATION and CAPITALS; 2, DICTION; 3, SENTENCES; 4, FIGURES; 5, SPECIAL PROPERTIES OF STYLE; 6, VERSIFICATION; 7, POETRY; 8, PROSE COM

POSITION.

1. Punctuation is the art of dividing written discourse into sections by means of points, for the purpose of showing the grammatical connection and dependence, and of making the sense more obvious.

2. Capitals are used for a like purpose, and, therefore, they may with propriety be treated of at the same time with the Points.

Note 1. That the sense is made more obvious to the eye by the use of points and capitals will be evident to any one who will make the experiment. Take almost any familiar sentence, and write it as the ancients used to write, that is, unpointed and unspaced, and with the letters either all small or all capital, and it will require no little skill and patience to decipher the meaning. A reader not apprised of what had been done would be apt to mistake the sentence for something in a foreign language. Here is an example, first in capitals, next in small letters, and then in the form now in use:

READINGMAKETHAFULLMANCONFERENCEAREADYMANWRITINGAN

EXACTMAN.

readingmakethafullmanconferenceareadymanwritinganexactman.

Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man; writing, an exact man. Note 2. The word Punctuation is from the Latin punctum, a point. The points now used in writing were unknown to the ancients. Aristophanes, a grammarian of Alexandria, about two and a half centuries before the Christian era, introduced some of the marks now used in punctuation. But the points did not come into common use until the time of Aldus Manutius, a learned printer of Venice, who reduced the matter to a system about the year 1500, and, by the extreme beauty and accuracy of his editions, gave it general currency. Note 3. The word Capital is from the Latin caput, a head. The letters of the word or words forming the caput. heading, or title of a discourse, are called headletters, or capitals.

Note 4. The capital letters were those first invented, and were in use many centuries before the invention of the small letters. The oldest manuscripts now in existence, some of which date as far back as the third century, are written entirely in capitals, and are likewise almost without points, and without spacing between the words. The small letters were first introduced about the seventh century; but, for some time after the introduction of the small letters, the capitals continued to be used much more than they are now.

Note 5. It is sometimes stated, in works on Rhetoric and Grammar, that the points are for the purposes of elocution, and directions are given to pupils to pause a certain time at each of the stops. It is true that a pause required for elocutionary purposes does sometimes coincide with a grammatical point, and so the one aids the other. Yet it should not be forgotten that the first and main end of the points is to mark grammatical divisions. Good elocution often requires a pause where there is no break whatever in the grammatical continuity, and where the insertion of a point would make nonsense. For instance, the most common of all the elocutionary pauses is that made for the purpose of emphasis. If we wish to make a word emphatic, the way to do so, except in rare cases, is not to pronounce it very loudly, but to make a pause after it. This pause calls attention to the word, and with only a slight change in the tone of the voice makes the word emphatic. The insertion of a point to mark this pause would often detach adjectives from their nouns, nominatives from their verbs, and would, in many other equally absurd ways, break up the connection of the sentence. The following line from Shakespeare requires after "words" and "thoughts" a pause equal to that ordinarily assigned to a semicolon, perhaps equal to that assigned to a period.

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below."

If a point were inserted to mark this pause, the whole meaning of the sentence would be obscured. Thus: "My words; fly up, my thoughts; remain below." If it were desirable to mark these elocutionary pauses by typographical arrangements, perhaps the best way would be to do it by spacing. Thus:

"My words fly up, my thoughts

remain below."

3. The principal grammatical points are five, namely,

1. The COMMA,

2. The SEMICOLON,

3. The COLON,

4. The PERIOD,

5. The INTERROGATION, ?

Note. These points have various degrees of disjunctive force, in separating the parts of a sentence from each other. This force may be expressed briefly, as follows: The Period, except when used for an abbreviation, marks the greatest separation of all, the parts between which it is placed being thereby rendered grammatically entirely independent of each other; the Colon marks a separation somewhat less than that of the Period; the Semicolon, less than that of the Colon; and the Comma, less than that of the Semicolon. The Interrogation,

though usually counted as equivalent to a period, may be equivalent to a comma, a semicolon, a colon, or a period, according to circumstances.

4. Besides the five points already named, several other characters are used for similar purposes. The most common of these are the following:

Note. There seems no more necessity for saying Interrogation Point, Exclamation Point, etc., than for saying Comma Point, Semicolon Point. Custom, however, still obliges us to use the expression in some connections.

SECTION I.

THE COMMA.

The Comma marks the smallest of the grammatical divisions of discourse that require a point.

Note 1. The word Comma, Greek κóμμa, comma, (from xóлтш, coрto, to cut,) denotes something cut off, a section. It was used originally to denote, not the mark, but the portion of the sentence thus set off. The same is true of the words semicolon and colon. They meant originally portions of discourse, not, as now, the marks by which those portions are set off. Period, Interrogation, Parenthesis, and some other like words, are used in both senses; they mean portions of discourse, and also the marks by which those portions are set off.

Note 2. The uses of the comma, which are very numerous, may nearly all be reduced to two heads. 1. The comma is used to set off by itself any part of a sentence which is, in some measure, detached in meaning from the rest, and which has a sort of grammatical coherence and completeness of its own. 2. The comma is used to mark an ellipsis of some kind. Example: "Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man; writing, an exact man." Here the ellipsis of the verb maketh, after “conference," and after “writing," is indicated by the insertion of the comma.

Note 3. Although nearly every conceivable instance of the use of the comma may be reduced under one or the other of these heads, yet for practical conven