Jim Barszcz writes:

> What I find most encouraging and exciting about this discussion is that Ed
> is using _literary_ examples on his Web site, rather than the forced
> specimens so (understandably) common to grammar texts.

I would like to throw some more literary sources into the pot.

In the authors below, prepositional phrases, clauses, and clause
conjunctions all seem to stand out very prominently.  (I think that
the old "rational style" produced a more patterned structure.)

Some examples from Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric:

The words that an author employs may be proper and faultless, but his
style may nevertheless have great faults; it may be dry or stiff or
feeble or affected.

As I observed earlier, it is often difficult to separate the
qualitites of style from the qualities of thought.

We are pleased with an author who frees us from all fatigue of
searching for his meaning, who carries us through his subject without
any difficulty or confusion, whose style flows always like a slow
stream.

Some examples also found highly structured:

I admire the activity of your benevolence, but every impluse of
feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion
should always be in proportion to the requirement.  (Jane Austen).

Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the
integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, will be
received and considered by the executive government of the United
States. (Lincoln).

They shouted, and there was no reply; they shouted and whistled, and
for the rest of the night they slept no more.  (H.G. Wells, "The
Country of the Blind.")

Robert Einarsson
www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb