We must learn the emphatic positions by experience,
and then our instinct will guide us. The whole subject is one of the
relative values of words.
3. The words in a sentence should follow each other in such a simple,
logical order that one leads on to another, and the whole meaning flows
like a stream of water. The reader should never be compelled to stop
and look back to see how the various ideas "hang together." This is the
rhetorical side of the logical relationship which grammar requires.
Not only must grammatical rules be obeyed, but logical instinct must be
satisfied with the linking of idea to idea to make a complete thought.
And the same law holds good in linking sentences into paragraphs and
paragraphs into whole compositions.
These three requirements have been named Unity, Mass, and Coherence.
The variations in sentences due to emphasis have given rise to a rhetorical
division of sentences into two classes, called loose and periodic.
A loose sentence is one in which words follow each other in their
natural order, the modifiers of the verb of course following the verb.
Often many of these modifiers are not strictly necessary to complete the
sense and a period may be inserted at some point before the close of the
sentence without destroying its grammatical completeness.
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