Rules for Composition
Key
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| Overwritten | brown with strikethrough |
| Added inline | purple with double underline |
| Uncertain | gray with wavy underline |
| Supplied from another source | turquoise with brackets |
| Metamark | |
| Long deletion | gray background with top and bottom border |
Rules for Composition
A perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, artless, with no ornaments, or attempts at ornaments, for their own sake,—^they only coming in where answering looking well when like the beauties of the person or character, by nature and intuition, ^and never lugged in in in by the colla to show off, which founders nullifies the best of them, no matter under when and where, or under of the most favorable cases.
Take no illustrations whatever from the ancients or classics, nor from the mythology, nor Egypt, Greece, or Rome—nor from the royal and aristocratic institutions and forms of Europe.—Make no mention or allusion to them whatever, except as they relate to the new, present things—to our country—to American character or interests.—Of specific mention of them, even infor these purposes, as little as possible.—
Too much attempt at ornament is the blur upon nearly all literary styles.
Clearness, simplicity, no twistified or foggy sentences, at all—the most translucid clearness without variation.—
Common idioms and phrases—Yankeeisms and vulgarisms—cant expressions, when very pat only.—
Mention not God at all
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