Sentence #1

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

Any sentence can be transformed into a different structure.This one, however, seems unchangeable, especially when it is being rattled off on the typewriter as a warm -- up exercise. (As a matter of fact, the sentence was created by Charles E. Weller to test the first typewriter in 1867. The next year it was used as a slogan in Grant's first campaign for President.) With some thought, though, one can quite easily come up with half a dozen different versions. A writer striving to polish the thought he wants to express is often, perhaps always, ringing changes on the sentence at hand. This opportunity to revise makes the difference between the written and the spoken style.

One possible transformation is as follows: THE AID OF THE PARTY IS WHAT IT IS TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO NOW. Both "the aid of the party" and 'now" are crucial elements in the sentence and deserve the emphatic prominence of initial and final position that they have in the original and revised sentences. In the revision, however, they are reversed This change required the use of a new element, the "what" clause, wordy and awkward. It also moved "the aid of the party" away from the preposition "to" and resulted in ending the sentence (except for "now") with a preposition. To avoid this traditional bugaboo of the English teacher, one could put "to" at the beginning -- TO THE AID OF THE PARTY IS WHAT IT IS TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME NOW -- but this grammatically "correct" version is ludicrous.

Let's try something more proper: THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THE PARTY IS NOW. The word "now" is properly emphatic here, but "the time" robs "the aid of the party" of its proper emphasis. "The time" is an empty phrase, required only for grammatical logic.

Another possibility is to make "come" the main verb instead of "is." ALL GOOD MEN SHOULD COME TO THE AID OF THE PARTY NOW. This change gives the active verb a more important spot, which, as is often said, should make the sentence stronger. And this new main verb seems to require the strong auxiliary "should" to retain the meaning of the original. This revision is hard to fault. It has an admirable directness, the result of conforming to the model structure of the English declarative sentence: sentence + verb + (adverb). But the two adverb elements, an adverb and a prepositional phrase following the verb, give this version a completely different rhythm from that of the original.

Its the rhythm that gives the original its character. And makes it so easy to type, quick and bouncy. Charles E. Weller must have loved the tune, three melodious phrases, the final one made up of three smaller phrases and ending with the only word of more than one syllable in the sentence, a strong conclusion of the rhythm. The inverted order (adverb at the beginning) is a rhetorical flourish that dictated the entire structure. No thoughtless floundering, the writer knew how the sentence would go right to the end as soon as he chose "now."

It should be clear why I chose this sentence as the first in the series of good sentences. We accept it without question. There is no doubting its meaning. Only deliberate intention could have constructed such a plain meaning. It intends what it says. Beyond that, the sentence approaches art. Its rhythm raises it above the ordinary decent sentence.

E-mail and comments to:   Arnold Nelson

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