Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/313

Rh clause at the beginning; where this is not practicable, as should be removed, and a colon or semi-colon used instead of a comma. Persistent usage tends of course to remove this objection by weakening the subordinating power of conjunctions: because, while, whereas, since, can be used where as still betrays a careless or illiterate writer. There is the same false ring in all the following sentences:

I myself saw in the estate office of a large landed proprietor a procession of peasant women begging for assistance, as owing to the departure of the bread-winners the families were literally starving.–Times.

Remove as, and use a heavier stop.

Very true, Jasper; but you really ought to learn to read, as, by so doing, you might learn your duty towards yourselves.–.

To read; by so doing,...

There was a barber and hairdresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a cockney accent, the French sounding all the better, as no accent is so melodious as the Cockney.–.

Use a semicolon and 'for'; the assertion requires all the support that vigorous accentuation can lend.

One of the very few institutions for which the Popish Church entertains any fear, and consequently respect, as it respects nothing which it does not fear.–.

For instead of as will best suit this illogical and falsely coordinated sentence.

Everybody likes lo know that his advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and quarries,...but to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him.–.

Again the clause is a mixed one. The point of view it suggests is, indeed, sufficiently obvious; but (unlike our typical pure clause above—'you do not know German') it depends for its existence upon the circumstances of the main sentence, which may or may not have occurred to the reader before. The full accentuation with which the clause must inevitably be read condemns it at once; use a colon, and remove as.

Pure clauses, being from their nature more or less otiose,