ebooks, books, e-text,
 free online classics, textbooks, online book stores

The Art of Making Money - by P.T. Barnum
Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

Happiness and Marriage -
by Elizabeth Towne
If it were not for personal attractions, particularly the attractions of one man and one woman, the _latent_ parts of both men and women would
remain forever undeveloped and their strong points would continue to grow stronger.

Diet and Health
byLulu Hunt Peters, A.B., M.D.
Five hundred Calories equal approximately 2 ounces of fat. Two ounces
per day would be about 4 pounds per month, or 48 pounds per year.
Cutting out 1000 Calories per day would equal a reduction of approximately 8 pounds per month, or 96 pounds per year. These pounds you can absolutely lose by having a knowledge of food values (calories)
and regulating your intake accordingly. You can now see the importance of a knowledge of calories.
 

What's HOT! Bestseller 1. Fearless Fourteen 2. The Host 3. The Art of Racing in the Rain 4. The Enchantress of Florence 5. Sail

You Have The Answers
We're Still Trying To Figure Out What The Questions Are

The Evolution of Stickers
The History of the Sticker
Headline news
The Sticker News Testimonial Segment
A Commentary
More on the Evolution of Stickers
Dung Sticker Comes Home
Even More Sticker Evolution
Previews, commercials and boring stuff
Special Sticker Diet Show
Discussion With An Old Man
It's Our Anniversary
Soccer Moms Love StickerNewz
The Invention of . . .
Win Free Money
A Nursing Home Revelation
The Bermuda Triangle
Why You Should Never Climb Pikes Peek
Looking Back on Some Past Articles
StickerNewz Giveaway
FREE MONEY
My Two Favorite U.S. Presidents
The Plight of the American Red Man
Decal Manufacturers Deny Thermal . . .
A Spectacular Dream
A Letter From Brittany Brown
QUICKSASSY
Bright Silver Stock
Advertise Your Band or Website on Stickers!!!
Just How Cheap Is Max?
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Hackerstickers - The Newest Craze
In Cold Blood On Ice
Bob Scalps Prices
The Quicksilver Messenger Service
Celestial Beings Sited
Rigley's Maybe It's True
Irv
Irv II: The Bridge
Irv III: The Bridge2
Article 40
Irv IV: The Bridge3
This Just In . . .
ATTILA THE HUN VS. THE YING WOMEN
WHAT IS AN IDIOT SAVANT?
THE INVENTION OF THE NON-ADHESIVE LABEL
LUCILLE WEIGHS IN AT 305 LBS.
Labels, Labels and More Labels
Irv V The Bridge IV

Panda Bear Sneezing Video!

REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH
Vocabulary--Parts of Speech--Requisites
HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE CORRECTLY 
Produced by Tom Allen, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
By
JOSEPH DEVLIN, M.A.

It is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for all purposes of ordinary conversation and communication, only about 2,000 different words are required. The mastery of just twenty hundred words, the knowing where to place them, will make us not masters of the English language, but masters of correct speaking and writing. Small number, you will say, compared with what is in the dictionary! But nobody ever uses all the words in the dictionary or could use them did he live to be the age of Methuselah, and there is no necessity for using them.

There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the large dictionaries, but the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice for all your wants. Of course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old friends are always good friends.

To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use simple words.

To go back to the number necessary for all purposes of conversation correspondence and writing, 2,000, we find that a great many people who pass in society as being polished, refined and educated use less, for they know less. The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half the number.

In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today.

Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tongue correctly. It only requires a little pains, a little care, a little study to enable one to do so, and the recompense is great.

Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make his very presence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company.

The proper grammatical formation of the English language, so that one may acquit himself as a correct conversationalist in the best society or be able to write and express his thoughts and ideas upon paper in the right manner, may be acquired in a few lessons.

It is the purpose of this book, as briefly and concisely as possible, to direct the reader along a straight course, pointing out the mistakes he must avoid and giving him such assistance as will enable him to reach the goal of a correct knowledge of the English language. It is not a Grammar in any sense, but a guide, a silent signal-post pointing the way in the right direction.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL

All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common Nouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as _man_, _city_. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as _John_, _Philadelphia_. In the former case _man_ is a name which belongs in common to the whole race of mankind, and _city_ is also a name which is common to all large centres of population, but _John_ signifies a particular individual of the race, while _Philadelphia_ denotes a particular one from among the cities of the world.

Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that relation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subject under consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Persons are _First_, _Second_ and _Third_ and they represent respectively the speaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or under consideration.

_Number_ is the distinction of one from more than one. There are two numbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or more. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of _s_ or _es_.

_Gender_ has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, but while there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine, feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those of the male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, the neuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, and common gender is applied to animate beings, the sex of which for the time being is indeterminable, such as fish, mouse, bird, etc. Sometimes things which are without life as we conceive it and which, properly speaking, belong to the neuter gender, are, by a figure of speech called Personification, changed into either the masculine or feminine gender, as, for instance, we say of the sun, _He_ is rising; of the moon, _She_ is setting.

_Case_ is the relation one noun bears to another or to a verb or to a preposition. There are three cases, the _Nominative_, the _Possessive_ and the _Objective_. The nominative is the subject of which we are speaking or the agent which directs the action of the verb; the possessive case denotes possession, while the objective indicates the person or thing which is affected by the action of the verb.

An _Article_ is a word placed before a noun to show whether the latter is used in a particular or general sense. There are but two articles, _a_ or _an_ and _the_.

An _Adjective_ is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, which shows some distinguishing mark or characteristic belonging to the noun.

 

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Sharper Image
 

Today is: Thursday 07-03-2008