144 ™E EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH
(4) DEFINITION, ANALYSIS, AND QUALIFICATION I 4 5
Placing the qualification last leaves it uppermost in the reader's mind. This brings us to a second principle.
O When you can, place the qualification first and wind up on the main point.
Although some universities do play a purely amateur game, college football is a semiprofessional sport.
t> Use qualifying words and phrases.
Although a few universities do play a purely amateur game, big- time college football is, in general, a semiprofessional sport.
The addition of such expressions as "a few," "big-time," and
"in general" further limits the writer's assertion. So phrased, the sentence has sufficient qualification to forestall easy chal- lenge from those who disagree with it. Yet it remains clearly focused.
t> When a qualification must he expressed in a separate sen- tence, begin it with a word stressing its obviousness and follow it by repeating the major idea.
Big-time college football is a semiprofessional sport. Of course a few universities do play a purely amateur game. But these are only a few; on the whole, the game is subsidized.
It is not always possible to include a qualification in the-same sentence that carries the main point. In that event, introducing ' the qualification with an admission of its truth tends to disarm it. "Of course" (or "certainly," "obviously," "admittedly,"
"it is true that"), you write, "such and such is the case." The initial adverb tells the reader that you are well aware of the exception, which, the adverb implies, doesn't matter very much. With the qualification completed, you then reassert your main point, beginning it with a strong signal of contra- diction ("but," "however," "yet," "still," "even so").
At times a qualification requires several sentences or even
146 THE EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH
an entire paragraph. For example, George R. Stewart, arguing that the American colonists constituted an essentially ho- mogeneous culture, writes:
With few exceptions the colonists of European stock were of north- western European origins, and there can have been, racially, only negligible differences among them. Even in their cultural back- grounds they differed little. They were heirs of the European Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, and of the Reformation. They were Chris- tians by tradition, and nearly all were Protestants.
Naturally the groups differed somewhat, one from another, and displayed some clannishness. They were conscious of their differ- ences, often more conscious of differences than of resemblances.
Thus a Pennsylvania governor of 1718 was already voicing the cry that the American conservative has echoed ever since. "We are being overwhelmed by the immigrants!" he said in effect. " W i l l our country not become German instead of English?"
Nevertheless, from the perspective of two centuries and from the point of view of the modern world with its critical problems of nationality and race, the differences existing among the various co- lonial groups fade into insignificance. We sense, comparatively speaking, a unified population. In the political realm, indeed, there were divergences that might lead even to tarrings and featherings, but racially and socially and religiously the superficial differences were less important than the basic unity.
Professor Stewart's second paragraph qualifies the point he makes in the first and returns to in the third. Notice that he begins paragraph two with "Naturally," removing the sting from the concession, and that he opens paragraph three with an emphatic "Nevertheless." (The final sentence of that para- graph, incidentally, contains a brief qualification of its own.
Can you identify it?)
For Practice
> Identify the qualifications in these passages and decide whether they are effective:
(4) DEFINITION, ANALYSIS, AND QUALIFICATION 147 To my m i n d King James's Bible has been a very harmful influence on English prose. I am not so stupid as to deny its great beauty. It is majestical. But the Bible is an oriental b o o k . Its alien imagery has n o t h i n g to do w i t h us. Those hyperboles, those luscious meta- phors, are foreign t o o u r genius. W. Somerset Maugham
" W h e n the b e l l y is f u l l , " runs the Arab proverb, " i t says to the head, 'Sing, f e l l o w ! ' " That is not always so; the b e l l y may get o v e r f u l l . Such a proverb clearly comes f r o m a race familiar w i t h bellies p a i n - fully empty. Yet it remains true, I think, that w h e n the b o d y is in radiant health, it becomes extremely difficult for it n o t to infect the m i n d w i t h its o w n sense of w e l l - b e i n g . F. L. Lucas
\> Four pairs of sentences f o l l o w . Revise each pair t w i c e , c o m - b i n i n g t h e m into a single sentence to make an effective q u a l i f i c a - t i o n . In the first revision of each pair use idea (1) as the m a i n p o i n t and (2) as the q u a l i f i c a t i o n ; in the second, reverse the relationship.
Try to keep to the w o r d i n g , b u t y o u may change the order of the clauses a n d a d d q u a l i f y i n g w o r d s :
A. (1) Baseball is the great A m e r i c a n game.
(2) Its supremacy is b e i n g challenged by other sports.
B. (1) The Romans are regarded as culturally inferior to the Greeks.
(2) The Romans created a great and long-lasting e m p i r e . C. (1) Exercise is necessary to health.
(2) Too m u c h exercise, or the w r o n g k i n d , can hurt y o u .
P A R T
IV
The Sentence
CHAPTER
18
The Sentence: A Definition
Good sentences are the sinew of style. They give to prose its forward thrust, its flexibility, its strong and subtle rhythms.
The cardinal virtues of such sentences are clarity, emphasis, concision, and variety. How to achieve these qualities will be our major concern in this part. First, however, we must un- derstand, in a brief and rudimentary way, what a sentence is.
It is not easy to say. In fact, it is probably impossible to define a sentence to everyone's satisfaction. On the simplest level it may be described as a word or group of words stand- ing by itself, that is, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. (In speech the separateness of a sentence is marked by intonation and pauses.)
And yet an effective sentence involves more than starting with a capital and stopping with a period. The word or words must make sense, expressing an idea or perception or feeling clear enough to stand alone. For example, consider these two sentences:
The package arrived. Finally.
The first consists of a subject and verb. The second is only a single word, an adverb detached from a verb (arrived). The idea might have been expressed in one sentence:
152 THE SENTENCE The package finally arrived.
The package arrived, finally.
Finally, the package arrived.
But we can imagine a situation in which a speaker or writer, wanting to stress exasperation, feels that finally should be a sentence by itself.
As that example indicates, there are sentences which con- tain subjects and verbs and sentences which do not. The first kind {Thepackage arrived) is "grammatically complete" and is the conventional form sentences take in composition. The second type of sentence {Finally in our example) does not contain a subject and verb and is called a fragment. Fragments are more common in speech than in writing, but even in for- mal composition they have their place, which we'll consider in a subsequent chapter.