"It also looks to the final elimination [separation] of the soul from the body."

"By such controversies

[elicited]."

truth is often eliminated

"Whenever she spoke I involuntarily listened, for I felt sure that if it were [was] on a moral subject some foundation would be cleared; if it were [was] intellectual, some new light would be eliminated" [thrown on it ?]. One of the worst of bad sentences. It is so bad that it can be mended only by rewriting it: Whenever she spoke I involuntarily listened, for if it was a moral subject, I felt sure that some foundation would be cleared; if an intellectual, that some light would be thrown on it.

Ellipsis. The omission of a word, or of words, necessary to complete the grammatical construction, but not necessary to make the meaning clear, is called an ellipsis. We almost always, whether in speaking or in writing, leave out some of the words necessary to the full expression of our meaning. For example, in dating a letter to-day, we should write, "New York, August 25, 1881," which would be, if fully written out, "I am now writing in the city of New York; this is the twenty-fifth day of August, and this month is in the one thousand eight hundred and eighty-first year of the Christian era." "I am going to Wallack's" means, "I am going to Wallack's theater." "I shall spend the summer at my aunt's"; i. e., at my aunt's house.

By supplying the ellipses we can often discover the errors in a sentence, if there are any.

Else. Followed by than, and not by but. It is nothing else than greed." The word is sometimes redundant; "No one else but me."

as,

Embody. This is a word that some writers make

great use of, and frequently misuse. Here is an example of its misuse:

"The plays that the author has embodied in this well-printed and illustrated book are those most likely to interest the young." If we retain the construction, the best way, perhaps, to mend the sentence is this: The plays that the author has given place to in this, etc.

Emigrant—Immigrant. These words are not infrequently confounded. Persons going out of a country are emigrants; persons coming into a country are immigrants. The New York Commissioners of Emigration are properly Commissioners of Immigration.

Encounter. Nowadays this word is commonly used in the sense of to meet in a hostile manner, to attack, to engage with, to contend against. "When knight-errantry was in vogue encounters were perpetually [continually] taking place between the knights, which were sometimes fierce and bloody. Shakespeare sometimes uses the word in the sense of meet, thus: "See, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks." In this sense the word is used, or rather misused, by an occasional writer now. Here is an example:

"But when in her presence, he saw her only as one of the most charming of her sex that it had ever been his good fortune to encounter."-Hammond.

Ending of sentences. It is a great, a very great, mistake to think a sentence should never end with a preposition. Sentences ending with prepositions are always more terse, always quite as idiomatic, and always simpler, than they would be if differently constructed.

"The man I gave it to," not "The man to whom I gave it." "The verb it belongs to," not "The verb to

which it belongs." "The house we live in," not "The house in which we live."

Enjoy bad health. As no one has ever been known to enjoy bad health, it is better to employ some other form of expression than this. Say, for example, he is in feeble, or delicate, health.

Enquire. This word and its derivatives are now commonly written in instead of en. In conforms to the Latin; en to the French.

Enthuse. This is a word that is occasionally heard in conversation, and is sometimes met with in print, but it has not as yet made its appearance in the dictionaries. What its ultimate fate will be, of course no one can tell ; for the present, however, it is studiously shunned by those that are at all careful in selecting their words. It is said to be most used in the South. The writer has never seen it anywhere in the North but in the columns of the Boston Congregationalist. The Standard Dictionary (1895) has the word, but says it is slang.

Epigram. "The word epigram signified originally an inscription on a monument. It next came to mean a short poem containing some single thought pointedly expressed, the subjects being very various-amatory, convivial, moral, eulogistic, satirical, humorous, etc. Of the various devices for brevity and point employed in such compositions, especially in modern times, the most frequent is a play upon words. . . . In the epigram the mind is roused by a conflict or contradiction between the form of the language and the meaning really conveyed." -Bain.

Some examples are.

“When you have nothing to say, say it.”

"We can not see the wood for the trees"; that is, we

can not get a general view because we are so engrossed with the details.

'Verbosity is cured by a large vocabulary"; that is, he that commands a large vocabulary is able to select words that will give his meaning tersely.

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By indignities men come to dignities."

"Some people are too foolish to commit follies."

"He went to his imagination for his facts, and to his memory for his tropes."

He that hath no dram of folly in his composition we may be very sure hath many pounds of much worse matter."

He spent his life trying to shoot big bullets from a smallbored gun.

It is dangerous to write when one has nothing to say. There is but one thing in this world that is much lauded and applauded-reputation.

To see much, one must know much.

Epithet. Many persons use this word who are in error with regard to its meaning; they think that to "apply epithets" to a person is to vilify and insult him. Not at all. An epithet is a word that expresses a quality, good or bad; a term that expresses an attribute.

Every adjective is an epithet, but every epithet is not an adjective. Epithet is a technical term of the rhetorician; adjective, a technical term of the grammarian. In prose, the epithet is often put after the noun, as, Napoleon the Great, Washington, the Father of his Country, John the Baptist, etc. A man's style depends much on his choice of epithets; those that use them sparingly, as a rule, are the better writers.

Equally as well. A redundant form of expression, as any one will see who for a moment considers it. As well,

or equally well, expresses quite as much as equally as well.

"The Plumed Knight's letter will contain about six thousand words. Perhaps two words would have done equally as well-simply 'I accept.'" The as or the equally should have been omitted.

Equanimity of mind. This phrase is tautological, and expresses no more than does equanimity (literally, “equalmindedness") alone; hence, of mind is superfluous, and consequently inelegant. Anxiety of mind is a scarcely less redundant form of expression. A capricious mind is in the same category.

Erratum. Plural, errata.

Esquire. An esquire was originally the shield-bearer of a knight. It is much, and, in the opinion of some, rather absurdly, used in this country. Mr. Richard Grant White says on the subject of its use: "I have yet to discover what a man means when he addresses a letter to John Dash, Esqr. He means no more nor less than when he writes Mr. (master). The use of Esq. is quite as prevalent in England as in America, and has little more meaning there than here. It simply belongs to our stock of courteous epithets.

Et cetera. &c., &c. is very frequently read ‘and so forth, and so forth'; and, what is worse, many people who read it properly, et cetera, regard it and use it as a more elegant equivalent of 'and so forth'; but it is no such thing. Et cetera is merely Latin for and the rest, and is properly used in schedules or statements after an account given of particular things, to include other things too unimportant and too numerous for particular mention. But the phrase and so forth has quite another meaning—i e., and as before, so after, in the same strain. It implies the