4. That it should end courteously and appropriately. 5. That the style throughout should depend upon the relations between the writer and the person to whom he writes, the circumstances under which he writes, and the matters about which he writes. I. Write: (1) a short note, asking a friend to take luncheon with you; (2) a more formal note, asking a favor of an acquaintance; (3) a formal invitation in the third person; (4) a business letter; and (5) a petition to a Faculty or some person or persons in authority. Follow in general the forms of the subjoined examples. Notice that in (A) the writer uses the conversational language of everyday life; in (B) less familiar language; that in (C) he follows the forms which society has adopted for convenience' sake; that in (D) the language is definite and concise without being curt; and that in (E) the language is definite and at the same time respectful. (A) 33 MARLBOROUGH STREET, MY DEAR FRED, Can you drop in for a few minutes between five and six, if you happen to be going by this afternoon? It is too bad to trouble you at this busy time of the year, but it is almost impossible to make clear in writing a certain proposition I want to make to you. Always yours, T. R. APPLETON. 15 CHAP. I.] Letter-Writing. (B) 14 BRISTOL STREET, PROVIDENCE, R.I. MY DEAR SIR, - My friend Mr. H. R. Smith of New Orleans writes me that you are in the city, though he is not quite sure of your address. I send you this note at a venture, therefore, hoping that it may reach you, and that if it does, you will give me an opportunity of continuing an acquaintance begun so many years ago, under such disadvantageous circumstances. A few friends will dine with me at the Pawtucket Club, Thursday evening at seven, and it will give me great pleasure if you will join us. Very sincerely yours, T. R. APPLETON. D. J. BENNETT, ESQ., 500 BROAD STREET. (C) MRS. AUSTIN SMITH requests the pleasure of MR. J. R. BROWN'S company at dinner on Saturday evening, October the sixteenth, at seven o'clock. 7 BRATTLE STREET, October tenth. Mr. J. R. Brown accepts with pleasure Mrs. Austin Smith's kind invitation to dinner for Saturday, October the sixteenth, at seven o'clock. IO MARLBOROUGH STREET, October eleventh. (D) TREASURER'S OFFICE, HARVARD COLLEGE, No. 50 STATE STREET, BOSTON, Feb. 18, 1893. DEAR SIR, On behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College I desire to inform you that a Library Reading-Room will be provided for the College by a single giver, and to ask whether you will consent to the application of your subscription for a Reading-Room to the much-needed increase of the stack accommodations in Gore Hall. If you consent, will you kindly sign the enclosed authorization and send it to Moses Williams, Esq., 18 Post Office Square, Boston? To the Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:— GENTLEMEN, — The accident to which I referred in my petition of March 13 still renders any use of my right arm so painful that my physician, Dr. J. W. Putnam, has forbidden me to take any of the final examinations. I therefore respectfully petition that in History, Economics, and English Literature I be allowed an oral examination early in June, and that in the other regular third year subjects I be allowed special examinations in September. I enclose my physician's statement in regard to my case. Respectfully yours, T. W. APPLETON. II. What are the letters before you? 1 faults in the form or tone of the Do not merely answer that they "violate good use," but give in each case a reason which will show that the difference between the good form and the bad form is a difference in fulness or definiteness of meaning, or a difference in taste that is capable of being rationally explained. 1 Letters illustrating typical errors should be written on the blackboard. CHAPTER II. METHOD PROPOSED.—WORDS: BARBARISMS; IMPROPRIETIES. 1. Method Now that our standard is settled, we can go on to plan our work. There are two ways in which we can treat elementary Rhetoric: we can regard the whole work of communication as done by words simply, and so confine ourselves to applying to words and to words alone the principle of good use, or we can regard words merely as units, so to speak, which style uses either separately or in such combinations as to form a unit of a higher order. The second method is the one we shall follow. We shall first treat words as they stand alone. But a sentence is no less a unit of style than a word, and so we shall later treat of the sentence as another element of style, a unit of a higher order than the word. And just as words in combination form a sentence, so sentences in combination form a paragraph, and paragraphs in combination form a whole composition. We have, then, four elements of style to treat the Word, the Sentence, the Paragraph, and the Whole Composition. By following this simple and logical scheme we shall be helped in getting a clear idea of the principles upon which our art is based. 2. Barbarisms. One of our first duties about words is obviously to make certain that the words which |