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WRITING IN ENGLISH

A MODERN SCHOOL COMPOSITION

BY

WILLIAM H. MAXWELL, M.A., PH.D.

CITY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CITY OF NEW YORK

AND

GEORGE J. SMITH, M.A., Pí.D.

MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF EXAMINERS, CITY OF NEW YORK

NEW YORK .:. CINCINNATI: CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

MAXWELL'S ENGLISH COURSE.

FIRST BOOK IN ENGLISH.

For Use in Elementary Grades.

INTRODUCTORY LESSONS IN ENGLISH
GRAMMAR.

For Use in Grammar Grades.

ADVANCED LESSONS IN ENGLISH GRAM-
MAR.

For Use in Higher Grammar Classes and
in High Schools.

WRITING IN ENGLISH.

For Use in Higher Grammar Classes and
in High Schools.

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY

W. H. MAXWELL.

AND

G. J. SMITH.

WRIT. IN ENC

W. P. 3

PREFACE

It would doubtless be presumptuous to imagine that this book, as a guide to the preëminently important school subject of learning to write English, avoids all the faults of its predecessors, or contains more than a portion of their merits. But unless a text-book is thought to possess some definite advantages over the others in its field, it has no excuse for being. Attention is therefore directed. to the following prominent features of this elementary treatise on Writing in English :

1. The general plan of the development of the subject is noteworthy, as proceeding from the study and production of entire compositions, in the first chapters, to the study of the next order of composition-units, well-made paragraphs, then to sentence-construction, and, at length, to the smallest units of composition, words. Since it would, however, be unwise to complete any one of these great divisions of the subject before attending at all to the others, this general order, while it is kept in view throughout, is modified as shown in the Table of Contents; to which, and to its prefatory note, attention is requested. This plan is justified not only by the established principle of teaching from the whole to the parts, but by the experience of all able instructors in English, that nothing is more certain to kill a pupil's interest in composition than to compel him to begin the subject by laboring over the minutiae of style and diction, as embodied in rules of good usage and exemplified in uncon

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