|
A still better rendering would be, "Since it was Saturday, when I wanted to go to confession, I took the car at three and drove to church. The confessor, however, did not come until four, so that it was almost five before I got home." This rendering is correct, rhetorically. However, a really superior talker would go a step further in reducing some of the ideas. She would instinctively calculate which is the most important idea she wished to convey. If it is to explain to her mother-in-law why her husband's dinner was late Saturday, she would subordinate everything around that point. She would then say, "Last Saturday, wanting to go to confession, I drove to church at three, but because the confessor did not come until four, it was almost five before I got home." Now we have a sentence in which the ideas, "I went to church and came home late" stand out sharply because all the other ideas are reduced to phrases, such as "wanting to go," "Last Saturday," and to subordinate clauses, such as "because the confessor was." |
|||
|
