Publisher's Synopsis
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 propor tion. 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.
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