HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE CORRECTLY

HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE CORRECTLY

By

JOSEPH DEVLIN, M.A.

Edited by

THEODORE WATERS

THE CHRISTIAN HERALD

BIBLE HOUSE

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1910, by

THE CHRISTIAN HERALD

NEW YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH

Vocabulary. Parts of speech. Requisites.

CHAPTER II

ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Divisions of grammar. Definitions. Etymology.

CHAPTER III

THE SENTENCE

Different kinds. Arrangement of words. Paragraph.

CHAPTER IV

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Figures of speech. Definitions and examples. Use of figures.

CHAPTER V

PUNCTUATION

Principal points. Illustrations. Capital letters.

CHAPTER VI

LETTER WRITING

Principles of letter writing. Forms. Notes.

CHAPTER VII

ERRORS

Mistakes. Slips of authors. Examples and corrections. Errors of redundancy.

CHAPTER VIII

PITFALLS TO AVOID

Common stumbling blocks. Peculiar constructions. Misused forms.

CHAPTER IX

STYLE

Diction. Purity. Propriety. Precision.

CHAPTER X

SUGGESTIONS

How to write. What to write. Correct speaking and speakers.

CHAPTER XI

SLANG

Origin. American slang. Foreign slang.

CHAPTER XII

WRITING FOR NEWSPAPERS

Qualification. Appropriate subjects. Directions.

CHAPTER XIII

CHOICE OF WORDS

Small words. Their importance. The Anglo-Saxon element.

CHAPTER XIV

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Beginning. Different Sources. The present.

CHAPTER XV

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES OF LITERATURE

Great authors. Classification. The world's best books.

INTRODUCTION 
In the preparation of this little work the writer has kept one end inview, viz.: To make it serviceable for those for whom it is intended,that is, for those who have neither the time nor the opportunity, thelearning nor the inclination, to peruse elaborate and abstruse treatises on Rhetoric, Grammar, and Composition. To them such works are as gold enclosed in chests of steel and locked beyond power of opening. This book has no pretension about it whatever;it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rulesand exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.Some broad rules are laid down, the observance of which will enable the reader to keep within the pale of propriety in oral and written language. Many idiomatic words and expressions, peculiar to the language, have beengiven, besides which a number of the common mistakes and pitfalls havebeen placed before the reader so that he may know and avoid them. The writer has to acknowledge his indebtedness to no one in  particular ,but to all in  general  who have ever written on the subject. The little book goes fortha finger-post on the road of languagepointing in the right direction. It is hoped that they who go accordingto its index will arrive at the goal of correct speaking and writing.
CHAPTER I REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH VocabularyParts of SpeechRequisites
 It is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for allpurposes of ordinary conversation and communication, only about 2,000different words are required. The mastery of just twenty hundred words,the knowing where to place them, will make us not masters of the Englishlanguage, but masters of correct speaking and writing. Small number, youwill say, compared with what is in the dictionary! But nobody ever usesall the words in the dictionary or could use them did he live to be theage of Methuselah, and there is no necessity for using them. There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the largedictionaries, but the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice forall your wants. Of course you may think not, and you may not be contentto call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to showsuperiority over others and display your learning or, rather, yourpedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call aspade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abradingthe surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar,simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test oftime, and old friends are always good friends. To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar onewill answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars andwriters and polite speakers use simple words. To go back to the number necessary for all purposes of conversationcorrespondence and writing, 2,000, we find that a great many people whopass in society as being polished, refined and educated use less, forthey know less. The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousanddifferent words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half thenumber. In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has everknown, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today. Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tonguecorrectly. It only requires a little pains, a little care, a little studyto enable one to do so, and the recompense is great. Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how tochoose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whoselanguage grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finerfeelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canonsof grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make his verypresence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company. The proper grammatical formation of the English language, so that one mayacquit himself as a correct conversationalist in the best society or beable to write and express his thoughts and ideas upon paper in the rightmanner, may be acquired in a few lessons. It is the purpose of this book, as briefly and concisely as possible, todirect the reader along a straight course, pointing out the mistakes hemust avoid and giving him such assistance as will enable him to reach thegoal of a correct knowledge of the English language. It is not a Grammarin any sense, but a guide, a silent signal-post pointing the way in theright direction.  THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL All the words in the English language are divided into nine greatclasses. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article,Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction andInterjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the othersare more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of anyperson, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have eitherthought or idea. There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. CommonNouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as  man , city . Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as John ,  Philadelphia . In the former case  man  is a name which belongsin common to the whole race of mankind, and  city  is also a name whichis common to all large centres of population, but  John  signifies aparticular individual of the race, while  Philadelphia  denotes aparticular one from among the cities of the world. Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is thatrelation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subjectunder consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Personsare  First ,  Second  and  Third  and they represent respectively thespeaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or underconsideration.  Number  is the distinction of one from more than one. There are twonumbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two ormore. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s  or  es .  Gender  has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, butwhile there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine,feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those ofthe male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, theneuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, andcommon gender is applied to animate beings, the sex of which for the timebeing is indeterminable, such as fish, mouse, bird, etc. Sometimes thingswhich are without life as we conceive it and which, properly speaking,belong to the neuter gender, are, by a figure of speech calledPersonification, changed into either the masculine or feminine gender,as, for instance, we say of the sun,  He  is rising; of the moon,  She
is setting.  Case  is the relation one noun bears to another or to a verb or to apreposition. There are three cases, the  Nominative , the  Possessive
and the  Objective . The nominative is the subject of which we arespeaking or the agent which directs the action of the verb; thepossessive case denotes possession, while the objective indicates theperson or thing which is affected by the action of the verb. An  Article  is a word placed before a noun to show whether the latter isused in a particular or general sense. There are but two articles,  a  or an and  the . An  Adjective  is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, which showssome distinguishing mark or characteristic belonging to the noun.  DEFINITIONS A  Pronoun  is a word used for or instead of a noun to keep us fromrepeating the same noun too often. Pronouns, like nouns, have case,number, gender and person. There are three kinds of pronouns,  personal , relative  and  adjective . A  verb  is a word which signifies action or the doing of something. Averb is inflected by tense and mood and by number and person, though thelatter two belong strictly to the subject of the verb. An  adverb  is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective and sometimesanother adverb. A  preposition  serves to connect words and to show the relation betweenthe objects which the words express. A  conjunction  is a word which joins words, phrases, clauses andsentences together. An  interjection  is a word which expresses surprise or some suddenemotion of the mind. 
THREE ESSENTIALS The three essentials of the English language are:  Purity, Perspicuity
and Precision . By  Purity  is signified the use of good English. It precludes the use ofall slang words, vulgar phrases, obsolete terms, foreign idioms, ambiguousexpressions or any ungrammatical language whatsoever. Neither does itsanction the use of any newly coined word until such word is adopted bythe best writers and speakers.  Perspicuity  demands the clearest expression of thought conveyed inunequivocal language, so that there may be no misunderstanding whateverof the thought or idea the speaker or writer wishes to convey. Allambiguous words, words of double meaning and words that might possibly beconstrued in a sense different from that intended, are strictlyforbidden. Perspicuity requires a style at once clear and comprehensiveand entirely free from pomp and pedantry and affectation or any strainingafter effect.  Precision  requires concise and exact expression, free from redundancyand tautology, a style terse and clear and simple enough to enable thehearer or reader to comprehend immediately the meaning of the speaker orwriter. It forbids, on the one hand, all long and involved sentences,and, on the other, those that are too short and abrupt. Its object is tostrike the golden mean in such a way as to rivet the attention of thehearer or reader on the words uttered or written.