Opposite, origin, original, parallel, 'participle, peaceable, perseverance, perform, pervade, physician, possessive, positively, precede, preeminent, preferable.

Prejudice, principal, principle, privilege, precede, professor, pursue, recollect, recommend, reservoir, rhythm, sacrilege, salable, seize, separate.

Several, siege, sieve, similar, stationary, stationery, sovereign, specialty, stratagem, strategy, succeed, symmetry, tangible, thorough, temperament.

Till, together, tranquilize, truly, tyranny, until, vacillate, village, villain, volume.

- It is worth the

19. The Importance of Accuracy. student's while, for two reasons, to make it his ambition to be accurate in spelling and in similar matters. First, accuracy in such small points will help him greatly in all his written work. Spelling belongs to the rudiments of education, and it is hard to teach higher things to a pupil not thoroughly grounded in the rudiments. Second, accuracy in details is a part of character. We feel that we can depend upon the man whose knowledge is accurate, and we are apt to suspect that the man who is slipshod in details is intellectually weak. Youth is the time to build up habits of patience, perseverance, and accuracy, and the study of English composition is one of the best means to that end. Third, the pupil who has to make a conscious effort to spell correctly must necessarily be obliged to withdraw a considerable part of his attention from more important matters.

20. Paragraphs. - One further matter pertaining to the general subject of compositions must be con

sidered. The idea' that printed matter is divided into paragraphs is familiar to all, but the young writer is often at a loss to know at what points he should break up his composition into paragraphs. For the present, it will be sufficient for him to notice that in the ordinary printed essay the paragraphs average at least one hundred and fifty words each. This means that it is usually not worth while to subdivide an idea that can be stated as a whole in one hundred or one hundred and fifty words.

CHAPTER III

ENGLISH USAGE

21. THE IMPORTANCE OF USAGE IN LANGUAGE. - 22. LITERARY USAGE, COLLOQUIAL USAGE, AND VULGAR USAGE.-23. CORRECT ENGLISH.-24. LOCAL USAGE.-25. AUTHORITY AS TO USAGE. -26. DICTIONARIES. EXERCISE 5.

21. The Importance of Usage in Language. The expression of thought by language involves a certain relation between two persons or sets of persons, a speaker or writer on the one hand, and a listener or reader on the other. It is by words that thought is conveyed from one person to another. It is plain, then, that whether the exact thought of one person reaches the eye or ear of another person, depends upon an agreement between them as to the meaning of the words used. Now, words have the meaning that usage gives them. They change from century to century in force and value. It is clear, therefore, that it is of the first importance in the study of rhetoric that we realize what meanings, in our time, are given to words by people with whom we communicate. It is equally clear that among the millions of English-speaking people scattered over the face of the globe we must expect to find at least

slight differences of opinion as to the meaning or force of certain English words.

22. Literary Usage, Colloquial Usage, and Vulgar Usage. Questions of usage are sometimes hard to settle, for the reason that usage varies slightly with different localities. The English spoken in Australia or India, the English spoken in the United States, and the English spoken in England, Scotland, or Ireland, are not precisely the same. Usage varies to some extent also even in the same locality. In the first place, written English differs in some slight particulars from spoken English. In conversation, for example, we habitually use such contractions as don't, shan't, and won't, and many familiar words and expressions which are rarely found in more dignified discourse, or in print. In the second place, there are many English words and expressions, such as hain't, worser, which are not employed, even in conversation, by educated speakers. We have, then, in any given English-speaking district or country three kinds of English, each differing to a certain degree from the others: (1) literary English, or the words and constructions used in reputable literature; (2) colloquial English, or the forms which educated people use in conversation; and (3) what we may call common or vulgar1 English, i.e. English used, whether in speech or in writing, by the great mass of the uneducated, on whom the words and constructions used in literature have no great

1 From the Latin vulgus, "crowd."

influence.1 Of these three kinds of English, the first varies least, in different districts or countries, and the third most.

23. Correct English. We call words or expressions "correct" when they are widely used in literature and conversation by people of intelligence and education. We call words or expressions "incorrect" when they are not used by such people, and are associated in our minds with ignorance or bad manners. It is obvious, however, that opinions may frequently differ as to what is correct or incorrect. The distinction is in many cases a question of taste, and some people of good judgment call incorrect what others of equally good judgment call correct. There is a school of rhetoricians and grammarians, for example, sometimes called "purists," who take in such matters the extreme position that certain words can be considered incorrect, notwithstanding the fact that they are widely used by people of intelligence and education. That is, they hold that words are not necessarily correct when used in the meanings given them in reputable current literature and conversation,

1 Vulgar English also includes dialect. A dialect, such as Scotch, is a local form of a language, greatly at variance with ordinary usage and spoken throughout a district. There are a number of dialects in Great Britain, and there are several forms of local speech in America, — that of the Southern negroes, for example, which differs in many particulars from ordinary usage. Dialectic expressions are often very beautiful and interesting, especially when they are dear to us by association, or have been consecrated, as it were, by centuries of local usage. Vulgar English is sometimes, too, a survival of what was in its day good literary and colloquial English.