would kindly bring her lunch along; Abner promised that he would."

If a question is put in the first person, shall often asks for instructions: "Shall I go?" But if mere information is asked, shall is still the form: "Shall I be required to do all this?" "Yes, I fear you will." Briefly, then, for a question in the first person aways use shall.

Where blanks appear in the following sentences insert the right auxiliary. Correct any misuse of auxiliaries.

1. Sometimes an Irishman, sometimes a Frenchman, is credited with this remark, "I will be drowned; nobody shall help me." 2. I- be delighted to see you with us.

lend me your pencil.

be able to speak well of that

4. The director thinks he student, if the boy need a good word.

5.

6

you be content if you get to college?
I be permitted to say that you

thing is done?

see him before any

7. Jim Hawkins was mortally afraid that he - be killed by Long John Silver; and in turn Long John began to fear that be the death of him.

Jim 8. you like some bread? [Here should is the better word; to like is a word expressing wish, and does not need the auxiliary would.]

9.

you mind my asking where you bought that jersey? 10. His father insisted that he stick to the task; and the son afterwards seemed glad of the fact, and asked whether he do some more work of the same sort.

11. If we were better, we be happier.

12. In which sentence can a contraction of he would be used? (a) He said be glad to accept. (b) Luther declared

go

to a certain city, though there were as many devils there as tiles on the housetops.

13. - I be asked to go? Yes, you will.

Mood Relations. It is often said that the subjunctive mood is ceasing to exist in English. This is doubtless true in part, but the distinction between indicative and subjunctive is held to sharply by literary usage in certain cases, particularly in the first person singular of the verb.

If I was asleep, I was not aware of the fact.

If I were asleep, I should not now know about this.

APPENDIX B: PUNCTUATION

PUNCTUATION can partly be reduced to definite rules, because it is partly governed by the laws of grammatical usage; but in part it can be reduced only to very indefinite rules, the application of which will require artistic sense. In general, it is a device for showing relations between thoughts, somewhat as prepositions and conjunctions do; and just as too many or too few words may be used, so too many or too few punctuation marks may be used. Punctuation is an important matter, therefore, and would not be relegated to an appendix in this book except that the student has undoubtedly received some definite instruction in the subject in earlier years.

1. The Period (.).— The period indicates the close of a declaratory sentence having both subject and predicate expressed Only in the rarest cases may it be used when subject or predicate is merely understood; see pp. 193-194.

2. The Semicolon ( ;).—The semicolon is a kind of weak period. It should rarely be used except in a statement grammatically independent, where both subject and predicate are expressed. It may be used, however, when one subject or predicate is understood throughout several independent clauses. Its chief rhetorical value is to connect independent statements that are so closely related in thought, and so unemphatic in the paragraph, that they are best considered as parts of one sentence unit. See pp. 189-192. The semicolon should not ordinarily be allowed to separate a mere dependent clause, performing the work of an adjective or adverb, and beginning with such a connective as who, which, whose, that, when, while, where, although, in order that, from the main statement on which it depends and which it modifies. When, however, the sentence is long, and composed of such clauses that the comma could not be the only interior punctuation without danger of misunderstanding, the semicolon may, by exception, take the place of the comma

before a dependent clause, or even before a phrase. All these uses of the semicolon may be illustrated thus:

1. Only in the wild northern country does man appreciate a house. It shelters him from real dangers; it protects him from immediate death.

2. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

3. Whether you work day by day, month in and out, in a city; or whether you are busied with that harder kind of work which goes by the name of being rich; or whether you travel the world over in search of recreation - you find the real secret

--

of happiness to lie in your own attitude toward life.

4. The view is blocked by an enormous smoke-stack; built of brick, and massive; blue in the cold winter mist; glowing like a pillar of fire as soon as the sunlight reaches it; the most changing, the most stable thing in this landscape.

The semicolon cannot be used directly before an enumeration of particulars not constituting an independent clause, but it may be used before the abbreviation e.g. (exempli gratia, "for example."). It is also used before the abbreviation, viz. (videlicet,1" to wit"); but the viz. is a legal term, and should not appear in themes. The actual English translation, to wit," is appropriate enough, written out, but is not often to be used in themes except as a humorous formality.

66

The semicolon is much preferable to the comma as punctuation before a clause beginning with the conjunction so. If the relation between such a clause and the preceding is so close as to make the semicolon seem obtrusive, then it is better to drop the so and prefix as or since to the preceding clause.

1. She said there was time if we hurried; so we hurried. 2. As the roots of the birch were in the way, we cut them off. 3. The Comma (,).-The comma is distinctively the means of punctuation within the sentence. Hence the worst mistake that can be made in using it is to confound it with the period. Examples of this fault are given on p. 179. A rapid series of independent propositions, very closely related in sense, may be punctuated by commas. Thus: "I came, I saw, I conquered." This is the only structure in which an independent statement,

1 Accent on second syllable; English pronunciation.

not introduced by a conjunction, is ever pointed with the comma. If there is any doubt whether or not the series is rapid enough to admit commas, semicolons should be used instead.

The tendency to-day is to use fewer commas than formerly. The tendency is a good one, growing out of the fact that the reader does not care to be interrupted by a disjunctive sign unless the omission of it would result in misunderstanding or in retarded understanding. Perhaps the best single modern improvement in the use of the comma is the omission of it before words of saying, thinking, telling, and the like, when these introduce not a direct but an indirect quotation. The modern usage may be illustrated thus:

Lord Chatham thought that the ships could be got ready. Lord Anson said that they could not.

A. Coördinate clauses, or compounding sentences, connected by and, but, or for, are usually kept apart by the comma before the conjunction. A semicolon may stand in the same position if the two compounding sentences are felt to be less intimately related than a comma would indicate; but an and is more often dropped after a semicolon.

EXAMPLES. 1. The birch is called the weed of the forest, but it is a beautiful weed.

2. The birch is called the weed of the forest; but it is a beautiful weed.

3. He was my chum in college, and he was a good chum. 4. He was my chum in college; and he was a good chum. 5. He was my chum in college; he was a good chum.

B. After a verb or preposition, the comma is needed if the next noun is not controlled by the verb or preposition. This is often the situation when two clauses are joined by and, as, for, or because. Punctuate the following:

1. They caught the bear and the cub, after a long chase, escaped.

2. I tried not to speak of him as a friend should keep still about a friend's infirmities.

3. We made another trial for luck was against our first.

4. We did not go to the cheese factory because we do not like fresh cheese.

1 Alford, a scholar who edited the Greek text of the New Testament, declared that in order to make the text understood he had to destroy more than a thousand commas.

C. After an adverb the comma is sometimes needed to distinguish it from a preposition or to give it a conjunctive sense. Explain the difference in meaning, as effected by commas, in the following pairs of sentences:

1. (a) Above the hill was darkness itself.

(b) Above, the hill was darkness itself.

2. (a) Again the British were foolish enough to advance.
(b) Again, the British were foolish enough to advance.
3. (a) Now the French seem to me wonderful stylists.1
(b) Now, the French seem to me wonderful stylists.

D. Parenthetical elements in a sentence are set off by commas when the degree of separation is felt, but not felt so strongly as to indicate the need of dashes or marks of parenthesis. Adverbial elements are sometimes felt as parenthetical, sometimes not. The following sentences are correctly punctuated:

1. Well, now, that is too bad.

2. Well, sir, you are early up.

3. No, sir, we cannot agree.

4. There is however no cause for complaint.

5. There is, however, no cause for complaint.

6. He read Emerson much; Carlyle, too, he liked.

7. He read Emerson much; Carlyle too he liked.

8. There was then no cause for complaint.1

9. There was, then, no cause for complaint.

10. The common skunk, or polecat, is a gentle animal.

E. A relative clause which is necessary to identify the antecedent is not to be separated from the antecedent by any punctuation. When, however, the antecedent can be identified without the relative clause-when the reader knows pretty definitely what is being spoken of before he comes to the relative clause-then a comma separates clause and antecedent. In this case, the relative clause is merely additional. Identifying relative clauses are not punctuated; relative clauses merely additional are preceded by the comma.

EXAMPLES. 1. There goes one of the Presidents who take an interest in all student affairs.

1 The adverb probably refers to time here, but there can be no certainty till the context is known. The words now and then are not always set off by the comma even when then means therefore and now means let us now consider.