Synopsis
English Style by George Frederick Graham. English Style is a comprehensive nineteenth?century instructional manual guiding students toward a good written style. It presents a structured curriculum for writing, composition, and rhetoric, and includes a lengthy historical survey of the English language from Saxon to Modern English. The book is organized in parts that cover ideas, words, and propositions; definitions, description, narrative, and various forms of argument; a wide range of subjects for composition; style, sentences, and figurative language; and the historical language chapter. It provides practical directions to teachers, numerous examples and exercises, and examination questions to test understanding. Central aims include perspicuity, purity, propriety, precision, unity, and harmony of language, with extensive treatment of common pitfalls (tautology, pleonasm, obscurity, improper idioms) and devices (metaphor, allusion, climax). A resource for higher?class schooling and self?improvement in writing, it remains a classic reference on English Style and the art of composition.
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