Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/227

Rh that what may be spoken effectively will not always bear the test of writing.

Rhetorical repetition, when it is clearly distinguishable from the non-rhetorical, is too obvious to require much illustration. Of the three instances given, the last is an excellent test case for the principle that 'whatever is intentional is good'.

a. Some more trite phrases.

The worn-out phrases considered in a former section were of a humorous tendency: we may add here some expressions of another kind, all of them calculated in one way or another to save the writer trouble; the trouble of description, or of producing statistics, or of thinking what he means. Such phrases naturally die hard; even 'more easily imagined than described' still survives the rough handling it has met with, and flourishes in writers of a certain class. 'Depend upon it', 'you may take my word for it', 'in a vast majority of cases', 'no thinking man will believe', 'all candid judges must surely agree', 'it would be a slaying of the slain', 'I am old-fashioned enough to think', are all apt to damage the cause they advocate.

The shrill formula 'It stands to reason' is one of the worst offenders. Originally harmless, and still no doubt often used in quite rational contexts, the phrase has somehow got a bad