e must use
correctly marks of punctuation. These things need not annoy a speaker;
yet they are conditions which must be obeyed by a writer. A man who
eats with a knife may succeed in getting his food to his mouth, yet
certain conventions exclude such a person from polite society. So in
composition, it is possible for a person to make himself understood,
though he write "alright" instead of "all right," and never use a
semicolon; still, such a person could hardly be considered a highly
cultured writer. To express one's thoughts correctly and with
refinement requires absolute obedience to the common conventions of
good literature.

The study of composition includes, first, the careful selection of
materials and their effective arrangement; and second, a knowledge of
the established conventions of literature: of spelling; of the common
uses of the marks of punctuation,--period, question mark, exclamation
point, colon, semicolon, comma; of the common idioms of our language;
and of the elements of its grammar. From the beginning of the high
school course, the essay, the paragraph, the sentence, the word, are
to be studied with special attention to the effective use of each in
adequately communicating ideas.

Five Forms of Discourse.

All written composition may be arranged in two classes, or groups. The
first group will include all composition that deals with actual
happenings and real things; the second, all that deals with abstract
thoughts and spiritual ideas. The first will include narration and
description; the second, exposition, argument, and persuasion. All
literature, then, may be separated into five classes,--narration,
description, exposition, argument, and persuasion.

Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look.
Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances.
Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves
the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon
a proposition. Exposition explains; argument convinces; persuasion
arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the
five forms of discourse.

Definitions.

_Narration is that form of discourse which recounts events in a
sequence._ It includes stories, novels, romances, biographies, some
books of travel, and some histories.

_Description is that form of discourse which aims to present a
picture._ It seldom occurs alone, but it is usually found