The substitution of “according to the spirit and the form it takes” for “as the case may be,” would convey, it seems to us, the author’s full meaning. With the omission of commas as suggested, this would give the following:
22-1. The custom of exchanging presents on a certain day in the year is a fine thing or a foolish thing, according to the spirit and the form which it takes: an encouragement to friendliness or a tribute to fashion; an expression of good nature or a bid for favor; an outgoing of generosity or a guise of greed; a cheerful old custom or a futile old farce.
23. The philosophical elements of his work are not especially profound or novel; its descriptive merits are considerable; but its deficiencies as an orderly and inclusive narrative are, to say the least, perplexing.
The sense relations between the three clauses of the above sentence are not properly expressed by its conjunctions, “and” (understood) and “but.” The incongruity of the _and_ relation becomes apparent upon reading the first and second clauses with “and” between them. The use of two semicolons in the sentence renders the “but” relation indeterminate.
The sentence needs to be recast, which may be done as follows:
23-1. The philosophical elements of his work are not especially profound or novel; and, although its descriptive merits are considerable, its deficiencies as an orderly and inclusive narrative are, to say the least, perplexing.
24. Amateurs in literary composition soon acquire the bad habit of writing carelessly; they spell strange names in two or more different ways; they form capital letters, and even the small lower-case letters, so obscurely that one word may be mistaken for another; they have no clearly defined system, or at least observe none, for the proper placing of capitals, italic, and the marks of punctuation.
The above sentence is from the preface of what is probably the most complete work on composition written in recent years. A preceding sentence contains the statement that our high schools do not “thoroughly teach the correct expression of thought in writing.”
In view of this charge against our high schools, and because the sentence under consideration is itself a type of careless construction, very common among even good writers, the sentence becomes interesting. It is divided by semicolons into four clauses, apparently in a series; but an analysis of the meaning of the language will show that the four clauses do not constitute a series.