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The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation - part 9
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Probing still deeper, the actual reason for too frequent use of ands is lack of good prose rhythm. Fundamentally this is said to reflect a person's sincerity, depth of feeling, and clear thinking. Perhaps if a person have much of these, he does not need to worry about rhetoric or prose rhythm: it will be given unto him, or has already been given to him. The power of a sincere, intense personality, such as Lincoln's was, will do many things right naturally, which others have to labor hard to achieve artfully. But no one should take for granted that he is blessed with this powerful personality. He should check to make sure. In general terms, he should make sure that he has more complex sentences than compound ones, and that he has approximately twice as many prepositional phrases as main clauses. More accurately and specifically, according to a Thorndike study, good writing for every seven independent statements should have one appositive, five verbals, six subordinate clauses, and fourteen prepositional phrases.2 This is the estimated rhetorical par, the construction for good rhythm in good writing.
It is true that in good conversation the par, the number of subordinate elements to main clauses, would not be so high. Nevertheless, the tabulation for good writing emphasizes the importance of proper subordination and gives the self-improving conversationalist some standard toward which to move. To put all this more simply and practically, however, if you find that when you have three ideas on your mind, you generally push them all into three main or independent clauses, then you lack proper prose rhythm. If you say, "I was tired, but I did not want to go to bed, so I read a short story," you are pushing each of the three ideas into a main clause. According to the Thorndike study, one of them should probably have been a phrase, and another a subordinate clause. Many constructions like that make any speaker appear garrulous or dull. If the three ideas had been weighed for relative importance and then ranked grammatically as follows, "Being tired, but not yet willing to go to bed, I read a short story," the effect would have been tonic, it would have exhibited an edge of liveliness. Hearers would not think of the speaker's rhetoric as being good, or of his having good prose rhythm, but they would tend to comment on his having such an interesting and lively personality! 2 See Easley S. Jones, op. cit., p. 197. While this proper rhetorical discrimination of ideas is very important, it is unfortunately no short cut. It requires considerable and continuous mental effort and self-discipline. A mere resolve is not enough. Fortunately there is another technique for giving life and personality to conversation, also necessary, but somewhat easier to acquire. It is the technique of being as specific as the circumstances warrant, of using a word which can best call up a definite picture. A really good talker will never say bird when he can say bobolink; house, when he can say bungalow; many when he can say fifty-nine; tall when he can say six feet, two. It isn't worms which catch the fish but a worm. The quickest and surest way to reasonably interesting speech is to replace the vague with the definite, the general with the specific, whenever possible. Edgar, in Shakespeare's King Lear does not merely tell his blind father that the beach is far below, he specifies items which indicate the drop. He says the croius (not vaguely birds but specifically crows) that wing the midway air look like beetles (not merely like insects but like beetles), and "The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice."
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