pipes and one has to learn how and when
to use these and this takes time and practice.

Right: On the organ are many stops which control the tones of
the different pipes. To learn how and when to use these takes
time and practice.

Faulty: He published prose fiction, and this was then the
accepted literary form, and the drama was neglected.

Better: He published prose fiction, which was then the accepted
literary form, the drama being neglected. [This sentence makes
three statements in a diminishing series. The important idea is
expressed in a main clause; a less important explanation is
fitted into a relative clause; and a still less important
comment takes a parenthetical phrase at the end.]

Note.--One of the crying faults of the immature writer is that by
excessive coordination he obscures the fine shades of meaning. When two
clauses are joined, the meaning will very often be more exact if one is
subordinated to the other. For a list of subordinating connectives, see
36.

Exercise:

1. He went down town, and it began to rain, and so he decided
to go to the city library.

2. There is an old saying which I have often heard and I
believe in it to a certain extent, and it runs as follows: The
more you live at your wit's end, the more the wit's end grows.

3. Our salesman, Mr. Powers, has spoken very favorably of your
firm, and we feel that our relations will be most pleasant, and
the report of the commercial agencies is sufficient evidence of
your good financial standing.

4. There was no escaping from this churn, so one of the frogs,
after a brief struggle thought that he might just as well die
one time as another, and so he gave up and sank to the bottom.

5. Socrates did no writing himself, and the only information we
have of him we get from the writings of his pupils and from
later writers, and our most reliable knowledge comes from two
of these writers, Plato and Xenophon.

=Choppy Sentences to be Combined=

=13. Do not use two or three short sentences to express ideas which will
make a more unified impression in one sentence. Place subordinate ideas
in subordinate grammatical constructions.=

Excessive predication: Excavating is the first operation in
street paving. The excavating is usually done by means of a
steam shovel. The shovel sc