CHAPTER I THE PRINCIPLES OF CLEARNESS The themes in connection with this chapter should be explanations (expositions) of two hundred to three hundred words. Argue whenever your explanation seems to need proof; try to be interesting; but keep as your main object to explain clearly. Most of the themes should be first spoken connectedly, then written. All themes should be written in ink on paper of one prescribed size, and on one side of the sheet. Each sheet should be numbered in the upper right-hand corner, and bear the initials of the writer in the upper left-hand corner. Find out whether the reader prefers the sheets folded (and how) or left flat and held together with manuscript clasps. 1. THE TWO OBJECTS OF COMPOSITION, THE object of all writing and speaking is to be clear; a further object of most writing and speaking is to be interesting. We speak that others may understand; we usually speak that they may share our feelings. Clearness and interest, then, sum up all that we try to achieve by words. How far we achieve these ends we know, not from what we meant to say, not even from what we said, but only from the effect on the people addressed. My letter to you is clear only if it is understood by you, to whom I wrote it; it is interesting only if you were glad to read it. The last speech that you heard was clear in proportion as it was grasped by the audience; it was interesting if they were attentive, if they showed by laughing or crying or applauding that they sympathized. There is no point in saying, "That is clear, whether you understand it or not." For all composition is measured by its effects. We write or speak, not to satisfy ourselves, but to make the impression that we wish to make on others. In studying clearness and interest, then, we are studying to adapt means to end. The means are the way we put our words together; the end is to make other people understand us and feel with us. The study of composition consists in learning how to write and speak so that people will surely understand and sympathize. 2. CLEARNESS STUDIED BEST IN EXPOSITION To be clear, to be interesting, are objects always; and all the ways of gaining them spring from that root idea of adapting oneself to readers or hearers. But no single composition is concerned with these objects equally. A business letter, for instance, is concerned more with clearness, a personal letter with interest. And as letters are thus naturally divided into two class, so are all other forms of writing and speaking. Though we may try to be interesting even when our main object is to be clear, and though we must be clear even when our main object is to be interesting, nevertheless one object or the other is our main object according to the kind of writing. Kipling's story, The Maltese Cat, is both clear and interesting. It is clear because we understand the game of polo without knowing anything of it beforehand; it is interesting because we are excited to learn how it will turn out, and pleased with each incident on the way. But evidently its main object is the object of story-writing in general, to be interesting. A |