XIII. I turned in my saddle, and made its girth tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique

right,

Rebuckled the check strap, chain'd slacker the

bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

(BROWNING) XIV. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.

(SHAKESPEARE)

XV. We fully recognize that, as has been true in the past, so it is true now, and ever will be true, the prime factor in each man's or woman's success must normally be that man's or woman's own character character, the sum of many qualities, of honesty, of courage, and of common sense.

(ROOSEVELT)

XVI. Away, away, my steed and I,
Upon the pinions of the wind,

All human dwellings left behind,

We sped like meteors through the sky.

(BYRON)

XVII The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. (RUSKIN)

XVIII. I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face. (GASKELL) XIX. Things are growing desperate up aloft; the enemy tumble rocks upon the rising line; they light fuses and roll shells down the steep; they load the guns

with handfuls of cartridges in their haste; and as if there were powder in the word, they shout "Chicamauga!" down upon the mountaineers. (TAYLOR)

XX. The solemn ceremonial of the first inauguration, the reverent oath of Washington, the acclaim of the multitude greeting their President, marked the most unique event of modern times in the development of free institutions. (DEPEW)

CHAPTER XIV

PHRASING AND PAUSE

Phrasing

Closely associated with rate are two distinct aspects of delivery: phrasing and pause. Phrasing is the grouping of words for utterance without an appreciable break, or pause. The basic principle of proper phrasing is the joining, in a single utterance, of those words which constitute a thought unit. Correct phrasing is mechanically desirable in that it provides opportunities for renewing the breath supply with reasonable frequency. It also adds to variety of expression by making use of the differing lengths of successive thought units. But the two chief aims of phrasing are to convey our ideas most clearly, and to bring out the relative values of the various factors of our thoughts.

Regarding the first of these aims, it is obvious that many sentences contain two or more concepts which may convey a confusing or misleading impression if they are merged in delivery. Take, for example, the sentence, "The investigators found in the warehouses great num-bers of eggs and chickens and people suffering at the same time because of the scarcity of food on the market." Now unless this sentence is properly phrased, the listener may be left wondering why eggs and chickens and people should be in the warehouse, or why the

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investigators should be suffering from scarcity of food, or something equally strange. But if the speaker breaks the sentence after "chickens," the meaning is perfectly clear. Other sentences contain factors which must be combined in expression if the listener is to get immediately the correct impression. Consider, for instance, the sentence, "The attitude of the workmen who refused to accept the terms was denounced by their fellow employees." To make the meaning clear at once, it is necessary to combine "The attitude of the work" and "who refused to accept the terms" in a single phrase.

men

to

Now as to the second aim of proper phrasing aid in the concentration of attention upon the most important elements of our thought. In the first place, a feature which stands apart attracts notice by that very fact. Therefore, if any phase of our thought, whether it be embodied in a word, a phrase, or a clause, has an unusually significant independent value, we give it separate utterance. If it has no independent value, or if we do not wish to attach to it the significance which derives from separate phrasing, we group it with another unit, and depend upon inflection, or force, or rate variation to indicate the most important of the combined units. For example, let us take such a typical sentence as “At about ten in the morning when the dew was off the ground, we started for town but it began to rain and we had to return." There are in this sentence five thought units, ending respectively with "morning," "ground," "town," "rain," and "return." But it would probably be better to speak the sentence in three phrases, ending with "ground," " town," and "return," respectively, since the subordinate units would be given

undue prominence by a more detailed phrasing. Each sentence presents its own particular phrasing problem, and the speaker must use his judgment as to what combinations and separations he should make in order to express himself most clearly and forcefully.

Two faults in phrasing art of common occurrence, both of which tend to defeat the aims just stated. One fault may be termed jerkiness: The speaker proceeds without regard to the logical grouping of his words. He habitually progresses by spurts of two or three words, unmindful of the difficulty of the listener in readjusting the words in their proper relationships, unmindful of the nervous tension which the sound of such a style produces. To illustrate this style, the above sentence may be read as follows: “At about ten the morning when the dew-was off the ground — we started for town - but it soon began to rain to return."

and we were obliged

in

Such a manner of speaking may in some cases be due to improper breath management, in which .event the speaker should at once give his attention to this factor. In other cases the fault results from incoherent thinking, or failure to guide his utterance on the thought unit principle.

The second fault in phrasing produces the same bad effect of making expression hard to understand and tiresome to the ear. But it does this in a directly opposite way, i. e., by habitually uttering without breaks long strings of words which frequently comprise several thought units. It is often possible to join two or more thought units in a single utterance, as has already been stated, but it should not be done habitually and without discrimination; for it is only where the thought units