EXERCISE 64. (Written.) Revise the sentences of your themes, inserting such words as will improve the unity of thought, the unity of form, the coherence, or the emphasis. Pay especial attention to repeating prepositions and the article whenever repetition will be an improvement.

§ 6. Wordiness. - Wordiness is a self-explanatory term. The thing itself is on the whole rather a good fault in a young writer. The very young student does not easily find words to waste. Not until he grows older, and not then to any great extent, unless he is somewhat impulsive and imaginative, does he over-dress. his thoughts.

Already we have had exercises looking toward the correction of the fault as it affects the whole composition and the paragraph. Every effort to exclude the irrelevant, or to "boil down" an unimportant paragraph, is in some sense an effort to avoid wordiness.

There are several forms of the fault, sometimes hard to distinguish from each other. Pleonasm is the technical name given to the presence of single words unnecessary to either the grammatical structure or the writer's meaning. Tautology is the needless repetition of the

same thought in different words. Might an example of tautology be also an example of pleonasm? Circumlocution is writing in a needlessly roundabout way, in such a structure that the excision of single words does little to remedy the fault. Prolixity is spinning a matter out with tedious minuteness of detail. Of these forms of wordiness, only the first three belong distinctively to a discussion of the sentence, for prolixity may not show itself except in a group of sentences, and rarely occurs in a paragraph where good proportion of parts has been provided for.

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In the case of pleonasm, we note that good usage affects the subject considerably. some parts of the country, oral speech reveals such pleonasms as "spine of the back," "little small boy." Literary usage admits neither of these expressions, although it admits others that are quite as pleonastic, such as "sit down," and "great big boy" (though it would recognize a colloquial quality in this phrase). In oral usage, "got" is added to "have" far more freely than in literary usage. "I haven't got any relative here" borders on the vulgar. The loose colloquial expression would be, "I haven't any relative here." This in turn, is less desir

able than "I've no relative here." The strictly literary usage would be, "I have no relative here," an expression which is not too formal for conversation.

Tautology can usually be treated as a form of pleonasm. In the sentence, "We live in a mighty and powerful, a great and vast country," the dead timber is easily seen and cut out. If, on the other hand, the tautology is very subtle, as in "try an experiment," it is well to overlook it. But if the trouble lies in a fondness for our own thoughts and a poor opinion of the reader's acuteness, we should try to learn that greatest lesson of art that the half is often more than the whole; that the secret of being tedious is to "tell it all." At best it is hard to know whether the amplification we give a thought is of that helpful, vital kind which makes the old thought almost as good as a new, or whether it is but vain repetition, of the sort for which Peter Springle paid his money. Peter Springle is the blacksmith in Mr. Allen's story of The Choir Invisible. Here is the scene referred to.

O'Bannon set the bottle down, took up a goose-quill, and drew a sheet of paper before him to write Peter the blacksmith's advertisement.

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"My business is increasing," prompted Peter still further, with a puzzled look as to what should come next. "Put that in!

"Of course," said O'Bannon. "I always put that in.” He was thinking impatiently about the ball and he wrote out something quickly and read it aloud with a thick, unsteady utterance:

"Mr. Peter Springle continues to carry on the blacksmith business opposite the Sign of the Indian Queen. Mr. Springle cannot be rivalled in his shoeing of horses. He keeps on hand a constant supply of axes, chains, and hoes, which he will sell at prices usually asked –

"Stop," interrupted Peter, who had sniffed a strange, delicious odour of personal praise in the second sentence. "You might say something more about me, before you bring in the axes.'

"As you please."

"Mr. Peter Springle executes his work with satisfaction and despatch; his work is second to none in Kentucky; no one surpasses him; he is a noted horseshoer; he does nothing but shoe horses.'" He looked at Peter inquiringly.

"That sounds more like it," admitted Peter. "Is that enough?"

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Oh, if that's all you can say!"

"Mr. Springle devotes himself entirely to the shoeing of fine horses; fine horses are often injured by neglect in shoeing; Mr. Springle does not injure fine horses, but shoes them all around with new shoes at one dollar for each horse.'"

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Better," said Peter. ALLEN: The Choir Invisible.

As for circumlocutions, many will be found to be tautological in essence. The most

noticeable however are the clauses which deserve no more than the space of words or of phrases. When a writer has so weakly grasped his thought that it seems to him complicated and formidable, he will tend to ponderous circumlocution. Try to frame an exact definition of something, and you will appreciate this. The word "accommodate" is neatly enough defined in the "Standard" dictionary thus: "To do or furnish something as a kindness or favor to, or to save trouble to." A novice would have arrived at about the same thought, by way of Robin Hood's barn: "Accommodate means when you do something as a kindness to somebody or other, or when you furnish something or other to somebody or other as a favor to him, or it means when any one saves you trouble about something, or you save him. trouble about it." There was once in that land which William Shakspere built out of airy nothing—a person who roved even more widely about this word "accommodate." "Accommodated," says Bardolph, "that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being, whereby a' may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing."

1 Where has this subject been touched upon before?