SECTION I.—­OF PURITY.

Purity of style consists in the use of such words and phrases only, as belong to the language which we write or speak.  Its opposites are the faults aimed at in the following precepts.

PRECEPT I.—­Avoid the unnecessary use of foreign words or idioms:  such as the French words fraicheur, hauteur, delicatesse, politesse, noblesse;—­the expression, “He repented himself;”—­or, “It serves to an excellent purpose.”

PRECEPT II.—­Avoid obsolete or antiquated words, except there be some special reason for their use:  that is, such words as acception, addressful, administrate, affamish, affrontiveness, belikely, blusterous, clergical, cruciate, rutilate, timidous.

PRECEPT III.—­Avoid strange or unauthorized words:  such as, flutteration, inspectator, judgematical, incumberment, connexity, electerized, martyrized, reunition, marvelize, limpitude, affectated, adorement, absquatulate.  Of this sort is O. B. Peirce’s “assimilarity,” used on page 19th of his English Grammar; and still worse is Jocelyn’s “irradicable,” for uneradicable, used on page 5th of his Prize Essay on Education.

PRECEPT IV.—­Avoid bombast, or affectation of fine writing.  It is ridiculous, however serious the subject.  The following is an example:  “Personifications, however rich the depictions, and unconstrained their latitude; analogies, however imposing the objects of parallel, and the media of comparison; can never expose the consequences of sin to the extent of fact, or the range of demonstration.”—­Anonymous.

SECTION II.—­OF PROPRIETY.

Propriety of language consists in the selection and right construction of such words as the best usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them.  Impropriety embraces all those forms of error, which, for the purpose of illustration, exercise, and special criticism, have been so methodically and so copiously posted up under the various heads, rules, and notes, of this extensive Grammar.  A few suggestions, however, are here to be set down in the form of precepts.

PRECEPT I.—­Avoid low and provincial expressions:  such as, “Now, says I, boys;”—­“Thinks I to myself;”—­“To get into a scrape;”—­“Stay here while I come back;”—­“By jinkers;”—­“By the living jingoes.”

PRECEPT II.—­In writing prose, avoid words and phrases that are merely poetical:  such as, morn, eve, plaint, corse, weal, drear, amid, oft, steepy;—­“what time the winds arise.”

PRECEPT III.—­Avoid technical terms:  except where they are necessary in treating of a particular art or science.  In technology, they are proper.

PRECEPT IV.—­Avoid the recurrence of a word in different senses, or such a repetition of words as denotes paucity of language:  as, “His own reason might have suggested better reasons.”—­“Gregory favoured the undertaking, for no other reason than this; that the manager, in countenance, favoured his friend.”—­“I want to go and see what he wants.”