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