News Writing Part 8

Having arrived at the county jail, the mob forced open the door.

=153. Agreement of Verbs.=--One should watch one's verbs carefully, too, to see that they agree in number with their subjects. One is sometimes tempted to make the verb agree with the predicate, as in the following:

The weakest section of the course are the ninth, tenth, and eleventh holes.

But English usage requires agreement of the verb with the subject. If the subject is a collective noun, one may regard it as either singular or plural. But when the writer has made his choice, he must maintain a consistent point of view. One may say,

The mob were now gathering in the northeast corner of the yard and yelling themselves hoa.r.s.e,

or

The mob was now gathering in the northeast corner of the yard and yelling itself hoa.r.s.e.

But the two points of view may not be mixed in the same sentence or the same paragraph. That the following sentence is wrong should be evident at a glance:

The Kellog-Haines Singing Party has been on the lyceum and chautauqua platform for eight years and have toured together the entire United States.

Confusion is often caused also by qualifying phrases intervening between subjects and their verbs. Thus:

The number of the strikers and of the members of the employment a.s.sociations do not agree with the report made by the commission.

And sometimes one finds a plural verb wrongly used after the correlative terms _either ... or_ and _neither ... nor_, as in the following:

Neither the mother of the children nor the aunt were held responsible for the accident.

Finally, one often finds reporters consistently using a singular verb after the expletive _there_. In fifty per cent of the cases the writers are wrong. Thus:

The briefest glance at the yard and premises would have shown that there was more than one in the conspiracy.

Here _was_ should be _were_.

=154. Coordination and Subordination.=--The third error in grammatical construction, failure to coordinate or subordinate sentences and parts of sentences properly, cannot be treated with so much sureness as the two preceding faults; yet certain definite instruction may be given.

_And_, _but_, _for_, _or_, and _nor_ are called coordinating conjunctions; that is, they are used to connect words, phrases, and clauses of equal rank. If one uses _and_ to connect a noun with a verb, or a past participle with a present participle, or a verb in the indicative mood with one in the subjunctive, he perverts the conjunction and produces a consequent effect of awkwardness or lack of clearness in the sentence. Look at the following:

The sister residing in Albany, and who is said to have struck one of the visiting sisters, followed them into the sick room.

In this sentence _and_ is used to connect the participle _residing_ with the p.r.o.noun _who_, and the consequent awkwardness results. This is the much condemned _and who_ construction. Likewise, in the next sentence:

Five hundred persons saw two boys washed from the end of Winter's pier and drowning in twenty feet of water at noon to-day.

_And_ is here used to connect the past participle _washed_ with the present participle _drowning_, and the sentence is thereby rendered clumsy.

=155. Clauses Unequal in Thought.=--An equally great inaccuracy is the attempt to connect with a coordinate conjunction clauses equivalent in grammatical construction, but unequal in thought value. Other things being equal, the ideas of greatest value should be put into independent clauses, the ideas of least value into dependent clauses or phrases.

_Other things being equal_, be it understood, for by a too strict observance of this rule one may easily make the sentence ludicrous. Take the following as an ill.u.s.tration:

We were to raid the hall precisely at midnight, and we set our watches to the second.

Here the thought-value of the two clauses is not equal, no matter how the writer may attempt to make it seem so by expressing the ideas in clauses grammatically equal. The second clause contains the main idea; so the first should be subservient. Thus:

As we were to raid the hall precisely at midnight, we set our watches to the second.

In the corrected form the sentence is given greater force by having the reader's attention directed specifically to the thought of prime importance, the setting of the watches. And so with the following sentences. Note that the second in each case is made more forceful by centering the attention on what is most important in thought.

The saloons were not allowed after January 1 to keep open on Sunday, and half of them gave up their licenses.

As the saloons were not allowed after January 1 to keep open on Sunday, half of them gave up their licenses.

He fell from the sixth story and was able to walk away without a.s.sistance.

Though he fell from the sixth story, he was able to walk away without a.s.sistance.

=156. Ellipsis.=--Ellipsis is the omission of a word or phrase necessary to the meaning of a sentence. An ellipsis is poor when the words omitted cannot readily be understood from the context. Pope's line,

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

is an ill.u.s.tration of good ellipsis because the word _is_ can readily be subst.i.tuted from the context. The following ellipses, however, are not good:

Louis Flanagan is helping his brother Silas cut wood and numerous other things.

He shadowed Laux longer than O'Rourke.

Standing on each side of the door, a fat and tall man looked suspiciously at them.

Ellipsis is often desirable for the sake of brevity, but one must be sure never to omit a word or phrase unless precisely that word or phrase may be readily supplied from the context.

=157. Clearness in the Sentence.=--After correct grammar, the next points to seek in writing the sentence are clearness and force, which together give a sentence its interest. Of the two, clearness is the more important. A reporter should never write a sentence that must be read twice to be understood. As has been said once or twice already, but may be repeated for emphasis, news stories to-day are read rapidly, and rapid reading is possible only when sentences yield their ideas with small effort on the part of the reader. Consider the following:

The a.s.sembly on Thursday refused to pa.s.s the Grell Bill, permitting the sale of intoxicating liquors, after the close of the polls on election days, over the governor's veto.

This sentence is clear if one will stop to read it twice; but there is the trouble: one must read it twice--a task few will perform.

=158. Grammatically Connected Phrases.=--The lack of entire clearness in the sentence just quoted is due to a difficulty over which the best writers often stumble,--failure to keep grammatically connected words, phrases, and clauses as close together as possible. In the sentence quoted, for instance, if the phrase _over the governor's veto_ were placed immediately after _pa.s.s_, the whole sentence would be clear at once to the reader. The same fault exists in the following:

The witness said she had a furnished bedroom for a gentleman 22 feet long by 11 feet wide.

=159. Correlative Conjunctions.=--The correlative conjunctions, _either ... or_, _neither ... nor_, _whether ... or_, and _not only ... but also_, are also particularly liable to trip a writer. Each should come immediately before the word or phrase it modifies. For example:

Either the prisoner will be hanged or sentenced to life imprisonment.

This sentence obviously is wrong. _Either_ here should come immediately before _hanged_, making the sentence read:

The prisoner will be either hanged or sentenced to life imprisonment.

=160. "Only" and "Alone."=--_Only_ and _alone_ belong in the same cla.s.s of modifiers that demand close watching. _Only_ comes immediately before the word or phrase it modifies, _alone_ immediately after. One should avoid using _only_ when _alone_ may be used instead, and should not place either of the two words between emphatic words or phrases. The following ill.u.s.trates an inaccurate placing of _only_:

The evidence seemed to show that a man could only obtain advancement in the Hall by submitting wholly to the dictates of the leaders.