The Elements of Style Part 8

I went to his house yesterday (my third attempt to see him), but he had left town.

He declares (and why should we doubt his good faith?) that he is now certain of success.

(When a wholly detached expression or sentence is parenthesized, the final stop comes before the last mark of parenthesis.)

=Quotations.= Formal quotations, cited as doc.u.mentary evidence, are introduced by a colon and enclosed in quotation marks.

The provision of the Const.i.tution is: "No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state."

Quotations grammatically in apposition or the direct objects of verbs are preceded by a comma and enclosed in quotation marks.

I recall the maxim of La Rochefoucauld, "Grat.i.tude is a lively sense of benefits to come."

Aristotle says, "Art is an imitation of nature."

Quotations of an entire line, or more, of verse, are begun on a fresh line and centered, but need not be enclosed in quotation marks.

Wordsworth's enthusiasm for the Revolution was at first unbounded:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Quotations introduced by _that_ are regarded as in indirect discourse and not enclosed in quotation marks.

Keats declares that beauty is truth, truth beauty.

Proverbial expressions and familiar phrases of literary origin require no quotation marks.

These are the times that try men's souls.

He lives far from the madding crowd.

The same is true of colloquialisms and slang.

=References.= In scholarly work requiring exact references, abbreviate t.i.tles that occur frequently, giving the full forms in an alphabetical list at the end. As a general practice, give the references in parenthesis or in footnotes, not in the body of the sentence. Omit the words _act_, _scene_, _line_, _book_, _volume_, _page_, except when referring by only one of them. Punctuate as indicated below.

In the second scene of the third act

In III.ii (still better, simply insert III.ii in parenthesis at the proper place in the sentence)

After the killing of Polonius, Hamlet is placed under guard (IV.ii.

14).

_2 Samuel_ i:17-27

_Oth.e.l.lo_ II.iii. 264-267, III.iii. 155-161.

=Syllabication.= If there is room at the end of a line for one or more syllables of a word, but not for the whole word, divide the word, unless this involves cutting off only a single letter, or cutting off only two letters of a long word. No hard and fast rule for all words can be laid down. The principles most frequently applicable are:

(a) Divide the word according to its formation:

know-ledge (not knowl-edge); Shake-speare (not Shakes-peare); de-scribe (not des-cribe); atmo-sphere (not atmos-phere);

(b) Divide "on the vowel:"

edi-ble (not ed-ible); propo-sition; ordi-nary; espe-cial; reli-gious; oppo-nents; regu-lar; cla.s.si-fi-ca-tion (three divisions allowable); deco-rative; presi-dent;

(c) Divide between double letters, unless they come at the end of the simple form of the word:

Apen-nines; Cincin-nati; refer-ring; but tell-ing.

(d) Do not divide before final _-ed_ if the _e_ is silent:

treat-ed (but not roam-ed or nam-ed).

The treatment of consonants in combination is best shown from examples:

for-tune; pic-ture; sin-gle; presump-tuous; illus-tration; sub-stan-tial (either division); indus-try; instruc-tion; sug-ges-tion; incen-diary.

The student will do well to examine the syllable-division in a number of pages of any carefully printed book.

=t.i.tles.= For the t.i.tles of literary works, scholarly usage prefers italics with capitalized initials. The usage of editors and publishers varies, some using italics with capitalized initials, others using Roman with capitalized initials and with or without quotation marks. Use italics (indicated in ma.n.u.script by underscoring), except in writing for a periodical that follows a different practice. Omit initial _A_ or _The_ from t.i.tles when you place the possessive before them.

The _Iliad_; the _Odyssey_; _As You Like It_; _To a Skylark_; _The Newcomes_; _A Tale of Two Cities_; d.i.c.kens's _Tale of Two Cities_.

V. WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED

(Some of the forms here listed, as _like I did_, are downright bad English; others, as the split infinitive, have their defenders, but are in such general disfavor that it is at least inadvisable to use them; still others, as _case_, _factor_, _feature_, _interesting_, _one of the most_, are good in their place, but are constantly obtruding themselves into places where they have no right to be. If the writer will make it his purpose from the beginning to express accurately his own individual thought, and will refuse to be satisfied with a ready-made formula that saves him the trouble of doing so, this last set of expressions will cause him little trouble. But if he finds that in a moment of inadvertence he has used one of them, his proper course will probably be not to patch up the sentence by subst.i.tuting one word or set of words for another, but to recast it completely, as ill.u.s.trated in a number of examples below and in others under Rules 12 and 13.)

=All right.= Idiomatic in familiar speech as a detached phrase in the sense, "Agreed," or "Go ahead." In other uses better avoided. Always written as two words.

=As good or better than.= Expressions of this type should be corrected by rearranging the sentence.

My opinion is as good or better than his.

My opinion is as good as his, or better (if not better).

=As to whether.= _Whether_ is sufficient; see under Rule 13.

=Bid.= Takes the infinitive without _to_. The past tense in the sense, "ordered," is _bade_.

=But.= Unnecessary after _doubt_ and _help_.

I have no doubt but that

I have no doubt that