A sentence may be said to be well-knit if it stands the following tests. It must have unity of form; freedom from excessive looseness; a due amount of emphasis; and climax, if climax is required. All these technical terms need explanation.

Unity of Form.—To be a unit of form, a sentence must place subordinate thoughts in subordinate clauses, and must keep one coherent structure throughout.

Subordination of Clauses.—In the early years of a language, before it has been used to express philosophy and science, the structure of the sentences is loose and simple; it sounds like the speech of a child. Here is a passage from a book which appeared about 1370, as the Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville. There is some doubt whether or not there was really a Sir John; but these Travels are very interesting and curious reading.

Though much of the naÏve, childlike quality of this passage is due to the archaic phraseology, much also is due to the use of and and but instead of other conjunctions.

In certain kinds of writing it is natural enough that ideas should be strung together with and’s. Thus: “It rained, and hailed, and blew, and snowed, and froze, and they became weary of winter.” But suppose that they did not weary of winter. The sentence then would run, “Though it rained, and hailed, and snowed, and froze, they did not become weary of winter.” Here we have ceased the mere enumeration of things that happened, one after the other, and have stated a process of reasoning. The result is a complex sentence. The ability to construct good complex sentences means ability to do careful thinking.

In every complex sentence there is some one proposition that ought to stand out, with the high light upon it. This is the thing we most wish to say; to change the comparison, it is the heart of the sentence. If the other parts can be made subordinate to it, the strongest kind of sentence unity is secured. In the sentence, “It rained; it snowed; it hailed; they did not weary of winter,” all the assertions are stated as equally important. But, clearly enough, the last one is the kernel of the sentence. Therefore the preceding clauses ought to be reduced to their proper rank by being made dependent.

Oral Exercise.—Examine the following compound sentences, to decide whether or not there is in each some important thought to which the others ought to have been subordinated. Then improve the unity by reducing the subordinate ideas to dependent clauses having a participle, or a relative adverb like when.

1. Love is blind; it is not for want of eyes.

2. The soldiers were perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon; they had now laid by much of their vigilance.

3. I spied an honest fellow coming along a lane, and asked him if he had ever heard of a house called the house of Shaws.

4. The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig; I knew well that barbers were great gossips, and I asked him plainly what kind of a man was Mr. Balfour of the Shaws.

5. In these days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this curse fell pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me; it took the pith out of my legs.

6. I was called in at last; my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea pieces.

7. I had come close to one of the turns in the stair; I felt my way as usual; my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it.

8. I returned to the kitchen; I made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year; I wrapped myself in my plaid; I lay down upon the chests and fell asleep.

The So Construction.—The conjunction so is a useful word, and the learner prefers it to its synonyms, therefore and consequently, because it is simpler, less formal than either. But in a narrative which is liberally besprinkled with so’s the reader feels that the simplicity is overdone. Here is an extreme example.

Examine the sentences just quoted, and show the relations between the clauses by other devices than the use of so.

So, as a conjunction, should be employed very sparingly. When it is employed, it should usually be preceded by a semicolon rather than a comma.

Oral Exercise.—A careful writer is known by his use of conjunctions: he does not use and unless the clauses joined are co-ordinate; nor but unless there is a real opposition; nor a given subordinate conjunction unless it is actually required by logic. In the subjoined selections from Ruskin the original conjunctions have been changed to those in italics. Find better expressions for those italicized.

One Coherent Structure.—We have seen that to be well-knit a sentence must have that unity of form which gives every thought its proper clause-rank. It must also be uniform in structure. There should be no sudden, unnecessary change in subject, or in the form of the verb. Sometimes a sentence is pulled about by the mind as a child by a cross nurse. It begins in the active voice, it is twitched aside into the passive. It begins as the act of one person, it ends as that of another. Even so admirable a writer as John Fiske has this sentence: “But Howe could not bear to acknowledge the defeat of his attempts to storm, and accordingly, at five o’clock, with genuine British persistency, a third attack was ordered.” This “British persistency” is evidently Howe’s. Why not give him full credit for it, thus?—“But Howe could not bear to acknowledge the defeat of his attempts to storm, and accordingly, at five o’clock, with genuine British persistency he ordered a third attack.”

Oral Exercise.—Change the following sentences so that each shall have unity of form.

1. A blue pencil? there is nothing so easy for an editor to manage, so unmistakable in reading, so wholly impressive to a contributor when he sees it.

2. Tom and East became good friends, and the tyranny of a certain insolent fellow was sturdily resisted by them together.

3. You will see no sudden jerks of the St. Ambrose rudder, nor will any clumsy rounding of a point be seen.

4. Miller, motionless till now, lifts his right hand and the tassel is whirled round his head.

5. Thorold had just read the account of John Inglesant’s vision of the dead King Charles. He disliked the idea of spending the night in the old country house, and still more to go through the tapestried chamber; but it was immediately determined by him that such an invitation must not be refused.

The Loose Sentence.—The passage given at the beginning of the chapter, from Mandeville, is written in what are called loose sentences. Loose as applied to a sentence, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is bad,—that it is rambling or disjointed. A loose sentence is one in which an independent statement comes first, followed by others, dependent or independent. Example: “And some men say that in the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocrates, in form and likeness of a great dragon, that is a hundred fathom of length, as men say: for I have not seen her.” In this sentence comes first a proposition,—“And some men say,” followed by several subordinate clauses, and by one independent clause,—“for I have not seen her.” The test of a loose sentence is a grammatical one: the sentence can be closed at some point before the end, without hurting the grammatical structure. At what places in the sentence just quoted is the grammatical structure complete?

The loose sentence is used freely in conversation. The speaker gives his main idea first, and qualifies it afterward. Therefore the legitimate effect of the loose sentence is to lend an air of simplicity, a colloquial air, to the style. The danger is that it may become a mere sequence of clauses, that dangle insecurely, each from the preceding, like needles hanging from a magnet. Avoid long loose sentences.

Examine the sentence by Defoe, p. 89. It is a fine example of what a loose sentence should not be.

The Periodic Sentence.—In the sentence, “A short time afterward my uncle died; so my aunt went to her country-house in Derbyshire,” the grammatical structure is complete at “died.” But if the two clauses be welded together by because, they will no longer be grammatically free. Thus: “Because my uncle died shortly afterward, my aunt went to her country-house in Derbyshire.” This sentence is periodic in form. A periodic sentence is a complex sentence in which the modifiers of the verb precede the verb. The effect of this structure is to delay the main idea of the sentence until the last.[22] Obviously, if too many subordinate ideas occur before the main one, the mind of the reader will weary with the tension of expectation. Short periodic sentences however are extremely effective in arousing the reader’s attention and holding it till the important idea is stated. It is plain that good periodic structure is highly conducive to unity in the sentence: each subordinate idea is held in its proper place of subordination till the main idea is stated, and on the reader is flashed a pleasant sense that the structure has grown naturally into one complete whole.

Oral Exercise.—Examine the oral exercise on pages 98, 99, and say which sentences were made periodic in the effort to improve their unity.

Oral Exercise.—Below are given some good periodic sentences.[23] Give equivalent loose sentences. Decide whether or not the loose are better than the periodic.

1. At this moment a large, comfortable white house, that had been heretofore hidden by green trees, came into view.

[Changed, this might read: “A large, comfortable white house had been heretofore hidden by green trees; it came into view at this moment.”]