Author: Alphonso Gerald Newcomer

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-11

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9781331184027

Excerpt from Elements of Rhetoric: A Course in Plain Prose Composition This book differs from most treatises upon rhetoric and composition in two particulars - arrangement, and proportion. The common order is reversed, and the study of words, instead of being put first, is put last, while at the outset attention is centred upon methods of gathering and ordering material. The reason for this should be plain. Composition must begin with ideas. Diction is the very last consideration in the process of constructing an essay - it may even be reserved until revision. If words be thrust first upon the attention, the student naturally supposes that words, instead of the ideas behind them, are his raw material. Composition becomes to him wholly an artificial thing. Freshness, independence, naturalness, ease, are put far from him, perhaps never to be attained. It is a matter of history that, excepting here and there a Pater and a Stevenson, our masters of letters have not come into their kingdom through wrestling with words. Such I offer as the main defense of this book, and reason for its being. The proportion of parts has been determined both by the foregoing consideration and by experience. The bulk of matter in our rhetorics is traditionary and, except for higher, critical purposes, useless. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.