=Exercise 21.=--Rewrite the following sentences, making them periodic.
1. The night wind swept by with a desolate moan. 2. The old shutters swung to and fro, screaming upon their hinges. 3. The village preacher's modest mansion rose near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled. 4. The noble six hundred rode into the jaws of death. 5. A sound came from the land between the fitful gusts of wind. 6. The silvery rain comes aslant like a long line of spears brightly burnished. 7. The snow arrives, announced by all the trumpets of the sky. 8. Great burdocks grew from the wall down to the water, so high that little children could stand upright under the loftiest of them. 9. The loveliest children ran about on the roads, playing with the gay butterflies. 10. The clear sun shone warm on the first day of spring in a little court yard. 11. An old castle looms over the narrow road. 12. The ivy grows thickly over the crumbling red walls, leaf by leaf, up to the balcony, and a beautiful girl stands there. 13. She glances up the road as she bends over the balustrade. 14. The lighthouse of Inverkaldy stood on a little rocky island, quite a distance from the mainland. 15. He rowed across the water with a cheerful heart.
=5. Bad Sentences.=--Good sentences, then, are sentences that have some variety in form and in length, and, in particular, that are frequently periodic. You will soon learn to give to your writing the little touch of grace or beauty that comes in this way.
But what are _bad_ sentences? What sorts of sentences should you try not to make? There are really only three kinds of sentences which are positively bad. The first is the "comma sentence."
=6. The "Comma Sentence."=--This name is sometimes given to sentences in which two or more independent clauses, not connected by conjunctions, are separated only by commas. You should guard carefully against this fault. If two independent clauses be placed in a single sentence, they should be connected by a conjunction or separated by a semicolon.
When independent clauses in the same sentence are connected by a conjunction, it is proper to use either a semicolon or comma. When they are not connected by a conjunction, only the semicolon can be used.