Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/109

Rh (i) When the clause is too strict in its limitation, it may be modified by a parenthesis:

Choose men who, during their time of office, have never been suspected.

A whole class, excluded by the defining clause, is made eligible by the parenthesis.

(ii) Similarly, a parenthesis may be added to tell us that within the limits of the defining clause we have perfect freedom of choice:

Choose men who, at one time or another, have held office.

They must have held office, that is all; it does not matter when.

(iii) Words of comment, indicating the writer's authority for his limitation, his recognition of the sentiments that it may arouse, and the like, properly stand outside the defining clause: when they are placed within it, they ought to be marked as parenthetic.

The latter sentence is an adaptation of one considered above on p. 91. 'Unhappily' there appeared not as a parenthesis but as an inseparable part of the relative clause, which was therefore defining or non-defining, according as 'unhappily' could or could not be considered as adding to the limitation. But with the altered punctuation 'unhappily' is separable from the relative clause, which may now define: 'that obtains in Europe and (I am sorry to have to add) in America.'

In sentences of this last type, the parenthesis is inserted in the defining clause only for convenience: in the others, it is an essential, though a negative, part of the definition. But all three types of parenthesis agree in this, that they do not limit the antecedent; they differ completely from the phrases considered above, which do limit the antecedent, and are not parenthetic.