Veracity. This word, which means, The quality of being truthful, is sometimes misused for truth, thus:

"There was no reason to doubt the veracity [truth] of those facts."-Addison.

"These two points have no more to do with the veracity [truth] of the Christian religion than chemistry [has].”

Truth may be used in speaking both of persons and of facts, while veracity is properly used only of persons.

“The truth of the story is admitted on the veracity of the narrator."

In the phrase so often heard, "A man of truth and veracity," veracity is entirely superfluous, it having the same meaning as truth.

Verbal. In strictness this word should not be used in the sense of oral, but its use in this sense is sanctioned by the best writers in the language, and also by the dictionaries.

"Without sending as much as a verbal message to Mrs. Slope's note."

A message in words, no matter how sent, is a verbal message.

Verbal ellipses. We frequently, and very properly, omit a verb in one clause of a sentence, but the ellipsis is permissible only when the form of the verb in the other clause is such that it could take the place of the omitted verb without any change of form; thus, "I am surprised that he has acted as he has." "Have you not sworn allegiance to me?" "I have."

The following are some examples of faulty ellipsis : "But you will bear it as you have [borne] so many things."

"I am anxious for the time [to come] when he will talk as much nonsense to me as I have [talked] to him."

"The Government refuses to accept the proposals for an arrangement touching the national debt, the construction [constructing] of a railroad to Quito, and the establishment [establishing] of an official bank."

"The organization created for the completion of [to complete] the fund is now moving."

'Although the fund required for the completion of [to complete] this monumental tomb," etc. The participial form would do, but the infinitive is very much better. See NOUN CONSTRUCTION.

Verbiage. An unnecessary profusion of words is called verbiage: verbosity, wordiness.

"I thought what I read of it verbiage."—Johnson.

Sometimes a better name than verbiage for wordiness would be emptiness. Witness:

"Clearness may be developed and cultivated in three ways. (a) By constantly practicing in heart and life the thoughts and ways of honesty and frankness." The first sentence evidently means, "Clearness may be attained in three ways"; but what the second sentence means-if it means anything—is more than I can tell. Professor L. T. Townsend, Art of Speech, vol. i, p. 130, adds: “This may be regarded as the surest path to greater transparency of style." The transparency of Dr. Townsend's style is peculiar. Also, p. 144, we find : "The laws and rules1 thus far laid down furnish ample foundation for3 the general statement that an easy and natural expression, an exact verbal incarnation of one's thinking, together with the power of using appropriate figures, and of making nice discriminations between approximate synonyms, each being an important factor in correct style, are attained in two ways: (1) Through moral and mental discipline; (2) Through continuous and intimate

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acquaintance with such authors as best exemplify those attainments." 10

1. Would not laws cover the whole ground? 2. En passant I would remark that Dr. Townsend did not make these laws, though he so intimates. 3. I suggest the word justify in place of these four. 4. What is natural is easy; easy, therefore, is superfluous. 5. If this means anything, it does not mean more than the adjective clear would express, if properly used in the sentence. 6. Approximate synonyms!! Who ever heard of any antagonistic or even of dissimilar synonyms? 7. The transparency of this sentence is not unlike the transparency of corrugated glass. 8. What has morality to do with correctness? 9. An intimate acquaintance would suffice for most people. 10. Those attainments! What are they? Dr. Townsend's corrugated style makes it hard to tell.

This paragraph is so badly conceived throughout that it is well-nigh impossible to make head, middle, or tail of it; still, if I am at all successful in guessing what Professor Townsend wanted to say in it, then-when shorn of its redundancy and high-flown emptiness-it will read some. what like this: "The laws thus far presented justify the general statement that a clear and natural mode of expression-together with that art of using appropriate figures and that ability properly to discriminate between synonyms that are necessary to correctness-is attained in two ways: (1) By mental discipline; (2) By the study of our best authors."

The following sentence is from a leading magazine: “If we begin a system of interference, regulating men's gains, bolstering here, in order to strengthen this interest, [and] repressing elsewhere [there], in order to equalize wealth, we shall do an [a] immense deal of mischief, and without bring.

ing about a more agreeable condition of things than now [we] shall simply discourage enterprise, repress industry, and check material growth in all directions." Read without the eighteen words in italics and with the four inclosed. Nothing disgusts sooner than the empty pomp of language."

"The rule now," Godfrey Turner says, "is to speak as verbosely as possible. We say, 'A certain person informed me that such was the case,' when there was no case, when the person was not certain, when he may or may not have been a person, and when he neither did nor could inform. The old way of speaking would have been, ' somebody told me so.' This is sense and grammar; there are four words instead of ten to speak, sixteen letters instead of forty-two to write; and, written or said, there is precision against gibberish."

Men that write in this manner never would have any idea of the true art of expression, if they were to continue to write till doomsday. They always lack that without which no man ever writes really well-the gift of clearseeing; a thing it would be impossible to convince them of, because they see what they see to see, and what they see they think is all there is to see. They belong to a class of persons that find felicity in ignorance, and they are commonly so panoplied with conceit that nothing can lessen their estimate of their merits.

Very. "In the third edition of Professor Maximilian Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language we are informed that in fact, very pleased and very delighted are Americanisms that may be heard even in this country.' The phrases just named become, however, in Professor Müller's fourth edition, simply 'expressions that may be heard in many drawing-rooms.' . . . And there they were heard,

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