The sentence is logically upside down, the main thought being expressed as subordinate, the subordinate This corrected, the sentence is at

thought as main.

once logical.

When I turned to reply, the platform on which I was standing gave way with a crash.

The following sentence has the, same fault, but the remedy is to cut the sentence in two:

Vasco da Gama first doubled Cape Colony, and later, in 1652, the Dutch came and made settlements there, when England, always anxious for new territory, seized all South Africa, with the attending results of six wars with the natives and with a mixture of natives and Dutch settlers.

In a word, a complex sentence must have only one main part, and that part must be expressed as the main clause.

32. In compound sentences, where there is no one main part, unity demands that there shall be real coordination, that the members shall be coequal parts of one main idea. Unity appears in the balanced sentences at §§ 45, 46. Compare also § 41. Most of the compound sentences that violate unity, except such as make merely irrelevant additions with and, do so because they violate coherence.

In revising sentences for unity, then :

(1) See that the punctuation tells the truth.

(2) See that the main thought is in the main clause, not in some modifier.

(3) See that the modifiers are relevant.

(4) See that the members of compound sentences are really coördinate parts of one idea.

33. Coherence in a sentence is primarily correctness in syntax, and, as such, is hardly matter of rhetoric; and, conversely, almost all solecisms are but forms of what the Greeks called anacoluthon (incoherence.) Thus different than puts a conjunction after a word logically followed by a preposition; thus the so-called hanging participle is a construction left unfinished; thus and which tries to make a clause at once coördinate and subordinate; and so of faults in correlation and in the sequence of tenses.1 But coherence in a sentence is

also matter of logic.

cars

or

The legend in open electric

Avoid danger. Keep your seats till the car stops,

Avoid danger and keep your seats, etc.,

is illogical. The weakness of the former will appear on reference to § 26. Substantially the same is the error of the latter. The writer has made two requests where he meant to make one. He has written as coördinate a clause that is clearly subordinate. He means

To avoid danger, keep your seats, etc.

The connecting thus by the coördinating conjunction and or but of two statements that are not coördinate is one of the commonest, as it is one of the gravest, phases of incoherence. The remedy is to be found not so much in the avoidance of and and but as in educating oneself to distinguish readily what is subordinate from what is coördinate. In brief, avoid illogical compound sentences. 34. Thus unity and coherence unite in demanding that the sentence adhere throughout to one plan. But, 1 See Appendix.

furthermore, that plan must at every point be clear. Failure in this may almost always be traced to one of three kinds of error: (a) undue ellipsis, (b) faulty reference, (c) faulty placing of modifiers.

(a) undue ellipsis.

Cardinal Richelieu hated Buckingham as sincerely as the Spaniard Olivares (ellipsis of the verb).

Daudet is nearer Trollope than Dickens (ellipsis of the preposition).

Even to-day many people are found who could not be induced to sit down in a party of thirteen at table, in the dread that one of the number would die within a short time, or would surely faint if a white cat were to enter the house (ellipsis of the relative).

(b) faulty reference.

If a man has done an Indian a wrong, his only safety lies in killing him (ambiguity of personal pronouns).

So on the third day he rode over a long bridge, and there started upon him a passing foul churl, and he smote his horse on the nose so that he turned about and asked him why he rode over that bridge without his license (ambiguity of personal pronouns. Compare (c)).

Black Death was the name given to an Oriental plague marked by inflammatory boils which in the fourteenth century desolated the world (ambiguity of the relative pronoun. Compare (c)).

(c) faulty placing of modifiers.

They are separated from the class to which they belonged in consequence of their crimes.

all

go to

Though we are all by no means connoisseurs, yet we exhibitions, not because it is the fashion, but because we think

it elevates our minds.

In this chapter is seen the master of Thornfield led about like a child crushed in attempting to save his wife who perished in the flames she had created.

35. Blunders of these types have given rise to the following cautions:

(1) A given pronoun must refer throughout a given sentence exclusively and unmistakably to one antecedent.

(2) The position of any modifier should be next to the word it modifies, or as near as possible. Negatives and the words only, merely, hardly, etc., demand especial attention.

(3) Non-restrictive (“coördinate ") relative clauses are always set off by commas, restrictive clauses never.

36. The unity and coherence of a sentence being properly matters of grammar, under emphasis is included all that may strictly be called the rhetoric of the sentence, the rules, that is, of effective form. For most effective sentence-forms are applications of the rule (§§ 8,9) concerning prominence of position. Of all such forms two stand as types, the period and the climax. A third, the balance, though not logically distinct from the two former, is so marked as to deserve separate treatment. None of these terms, in fact, is exclusive of the others; but each marks a model of construction.

37. The periodic sentence, or period, keeps its construction incomplete up to the end. It closes grammatically with the last word, not before. In general, that suspension of the sense which is characteristic of the period is accomplished (a) by putting all the modifiers before the main part, or (b) by the use of correlatives and other words of suspense, or (c) by a combination of these methods.

(a)

Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. — DE QUINCEY: The English MailCoach.

Such now being at that time the usages of mail-coaches, what was to be done by us of young Oxford ? — ibid.

Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied to the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. - BURKE: Thoughts on the Present Discontents.

An influence which operated without noise and without violence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into the instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tended to augment,

was an admirable substitute for a prerogative that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution. ibid.

Compare the first sentence in the paragraph quoted at $25.

(b) (c)

This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne, either is nonsense, and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirms a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position. - BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate resolutions who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom,