This list is comprehensive of the chief points to look for in verbal
revision. Faults of grammar need no explanation here. But we would
say, Beware. The most skilled writers are almost constantly falling
into errors of this kind, for they are the most subtle and elusive of
all, verbal failings. There is, indeed, but one certain way to be sure
that they are all removed, and that is by parsing every word by
grammatical formula it is a somewhat tedious method, but by practice one
may weigh each word with rapidity, and it is only by considering each
word alone that one may be sure that nothing is passed over.
In the same way each phrase or sentence, or figure of speech,
should be weighed separately, for its rhetorical accuracy.
Faults of taste are detected by a much more delicate process than the
application of formula+e, but they almost invariably arise
(if ones native sense is keen) from the use of a word in a perfectly
legitimate and pure sense, when the public attaches to it an atmosphere
(let us call it) which is vulgar or disagreeable. In such cases the
word should be sacrificed, for the atmosphere of a word carries a
hundred times more weight with the common reader than the strict and
logical meaning.
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