Review: Richard D. Mallery GRAMMAR, RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION FOR HOME STUDY
Review: MALLERY, Richard D., GRAMMAR, RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION FOR HOME STUDY: BASIC BOOK FOR EFFECTIVE ENGLISH IN WRITING AND SPEAKING. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1960 [1944].
What stands out the most in Richard Mallery's text G.R.&C for Home Study is this texts discussion of the now lost art of sentence diagramming. This text does a better job of discussing diagramming than the ever popular books of the Warner's grammar series that was prevalent in high schools throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Mallery in this grammar masters the voice needed to teach the average adult grammar. The book is written as a self-help book for those who want to improve their writing and reasoning skills. One advantage that this book provides the independent learner that many high school and college texts of the time lack is that Mallery's text provides a complete set of answers to the texts proactive questions. This is very helpful for the self-motivated and independent learner. As a text was originally published in 1944, it provides the learner with a strong sense of basic rhetorical principles. While not bogging the reader down with terms of classical Greek rhetoric, Mallery discusses in common language how qualities such as parallelism and repetition can effectively influence readers. I would also recommend the section on style pp 282-296 in the 1960 edition. In his style section, Mallery discusses the growth of modern prose style with examples from Early English, Elizabethan, The Puritan Age, and the Augustan Age to the modern period. This historical summary is than followed by an essay of what makes good prose. Although the section on research methods is dated, Mallery's user oriented voice, and clear presentation of sentence diagramming and style makes this self-help text worth review.
---Samuel Gordon Paley
What stands out the most in Richard Mallery's text G.R.&C for Home Study is this texts discussion of the now lost art of sentence diagramming. This text does a better job of discussing diagramming than the ever popular books of the Warner's grammar series that was prevalent in high schools throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Mallery in this grammar masters the voice needed to teach the average adult grammar. The book is written as a self-help book for those who want to improve their writing and reasoning skills. One advantage that this book provides the independent learner that many high school and college texts of the time lack is that Mallery's text provides a complete set of answers to the texts proactive questions. This is very helpful for the self-motivated and independent learner. As a text was originally published in 1944, it provides the learner with a strong sense of basic rhetorical principles. While not bogging the reader down with terms of classical Greek rhetoric, Mallery discusses in common language how qualities such as parallelism and repetition can effectively influence readers. I would also recommend the section on style pp 282-296 in the 1960 edition. In his style section, Mallery discusses the growth of modern prose style with examples from Early English, Elizabethan, The Puritan Age, and the Augustan Age to the modern period. This historical summary is than followed by an essay of what makes good prose. Although the section on research methods is dated, Mallery's user oriented voice, and clear presentation of sentence diagramming and style makes this self-help text worth review.
---Samuel Gordon Paley
posted by Samuel Gordon Paley at 4:56 PM
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