SB 1.10

RHETORICAL FRAGMENTS & PARALLEL STRUCTURE

SENTENCE FRAGMENTS

• Fragment- a group of words that lack either a subject or a predicate.

• Usually regarded as a mistake or error in writing because it is missing something vital to the meaning of the sentence.

• EX-

• “At the beginning of the movie.”

• “Leaving through the back door in the middle of the night last August.”

RHETORICAL FRAGMENTS

• Rhetorical Fragments are used in order to create an effect on the reader.

• Used sparingly and with discrimination, the device can no doubt be an effective medium of emphasis, intimacy, and rhetoric.

FRAGMENTS OF THOUGHT

• A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to this theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them.

NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE FRAGMENTS

• "Heads, heads--take care of your heads!" cried the loquacious stranger, as they came out under the low archway, which in those days formed the entrance to the coach-yard. "Terrible place--dangerous work--other day--five children--mother--tall lady, eating sandwiches--forgot the arch--crash--knock--children look round--mother's head off--sandwich in her hand--no mouth to put it in--head of a family off--shocking, shocking!"

SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIVE FRAGMENTS

• Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna. . . . Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying tough beefsteaks. . . . Lime and cement dealers being initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen of the World. . . . Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, hoping that they'll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren evangelist preach. . . . Ticket-sellers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form. . . . Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects. . . . Grocery-clerks trying to make assignations with soapy servant girls. . . . Women confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is all about. . . . Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.

PARALLELISM OR PARALLEL STRUCTURE

• Two or more words, phrases, or clauses that are similar in length and grammatical form.

• By convention, items in a series appear in parallel grammatical form: a noun is listed with other nouns, an -ing form with other -ing forms, and so on.

WORDS OR PHRASES

• With the -ing form (gerund) of words:

• Parallel:

• Mary likes hiking, swimming, and bicycling.

• With infinitive phrases:

• Parallel:

• Mary likes to hike, to swim, and to ride a bicycle.ORMary likes to hike, swim, and ride a bicycle.

DO NOT MIX FORMS • Example 1

• Not Parallel: Mary likes hiking, swimming, and to ride a bicycle.

• Parallel: Mary likes hiking, swimming, and riding a bicycle.

• Example 2

• Not Parallel: The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurate ly, and in a detailed manner.

• Parallel: The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurately, and thoroughly.

SOME FAMOUS EXAMPLES

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln

• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy

• "We are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.