Commas and Inflection Make a Difference

1895

Commas and Inflection

A Good Deal Depends on Them Sometimes

We published recently an account of a suit for heavy damages arising from lack of punctuation in a telegram. A man sent the message: "Don't come. Too late." But the doctor received it, "Don't come too late," and immediately engaged a special train to convey him a long distance.

Mr. Story, the sculptor, who began life as a lawyer, tells a good anecdote which illustrates the fact that the emphasis which punctuates has as much to do with determining the sense of a sentence as the meaning of the words. Once, when he was called upon to defend a woman accused of murdering her husband, he adduced as one of the proofs of her innocence the fact of her having attended him on his deathbed, and saying to him, when he was dying, "Goodbye, George!" The counsel for the prosecution declared that that ought rather to be taken as a proof of her guilt, and that the words she had used were "Good! by George!"

A well known clergyman of New York used to make a strong point by reading the verse, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light," with the emphasis on the word light, not on was, as usually rendered.

An elocutionist of considerable note has questioned the method of the great Mrs. Siddons, who in answer to Macbeth's suggestion of possible failure was wont to reply, "Fail!" with a emphatic drop of the voice that implied, "Well, then, fail, that's all there is to it." "Lady Macbeth would never have got him in the world," said this critic, "had she addressed him in that manner. She undoubtedly said, 'Fail,' in a tone of utter contempt for a man who could imagine such an outcome to his villainy. The word should be given in a deep tone, with a falling inflection and then an upward tendency." — Brooklyn Eagle.

Professor Teaches Telephone Girls to Smile, Speak Pleasantly

1902

Telephone Girl's Smile

Chicago telephone girls are learning the art of sending smiles over the wires. It is true only a few of the young women at "Central" have been initiated into the mysteries as yet, but it is beginning, says the Chicago Record-Herald.

The smiles reach the subscribers in the form of ecstatic thrills. Under their magnetic influence men are transformed into superior beings, for when was man ever proof against the smile of a pretty woman? No matter how cross or worried or hurried the caller may be, the modern young goddess, whose fillet clasps her scalp instead of encircling her brow, immediately puts him under a spell by smiling at him over the wire. The curmudgeon is transformed from an ugly bear into a placid human being. The man with worries forgets them while basking in the radiance thrown about him by electrical magic. The hustler who ordinarily works under 400 pounds pressure lingers at the telephone as long as the smile diffuses its delicious sensations, and he even cries for more.

"How absurd!" Doubtless that is what some readers are saying. Several of the telephone girls made the same remark when Professor George A. Vinton, teacher of expression, unfolded the new art to them. They also added:

"The idea of our grinning into the transmitters! Why, it is foolish, and will make us a laughing stock."

"Now, my dear girls," said the professor in his suavest tone, "let me assure you, out of my long experience, that you are mistaken. If you wish to be treated pleasantly by other persons you must be pleasant to them. Furthermore, my dears, you are never so lovely as when you are smiling. You cannot smile without having a kindly feeling, and if you speak while smiling you cannot keep that feeling out of the tones of your voice. If you are cross you may be sure your tones will irritate the man at the other end of the wire. If you are pleasant your tones will soothe him, and you cannot be pleasant without looking pleasant. Now, Miss Jones, just try it once; please do. Put on your sweetest smile in answering that subscriber who has just called. Ah, that's it. Now, didn't you observe a change in his manner when he spoke after you smiled?"

Miss Jones answered affirmatively, and the professor beamed even more cheerily than before. But the art of smiling over the telephone wires is only a part of the instruction Professor Vinton is giving a class of girls at "central." He is teaching what he believes to be the most effective, correct and pleasant manner of using the English language. He is training them in the art of articulation and expression — to enunciate words distinctly and to use tones of the greatest carrying power. "Articulation is the diamond of uttered speech, but expression is almost as important. To get the full force of language the expression should be suited to the words. Listen to anyone reading poetry. It is jingle, jingle, jingle, and half the meaning of the lines lost. You can tell to what denomination a minister belongs by the mannerism of his voice. Few lawyers know how to read aloud effectively. At the woman's club the speakers use breathy voices that cannot be understood 15 feet away. Children are graduated from the high schools with foreign accents and abominable English. It is a shameful condition of affairs, but it can be remedied if the school authorities will only make the effort.

"In Germany children are taught the phonetics of their language. Something of the same sort is done in some of the schools of this country, but for the most part it is a bluff. Clean, clear articulation should be taught in the public schools of Chicago. Who ever saw a school child in this city use any but the most stilted expression? There are elocutionists who profess to train the voice for speaking, but they generally make the mistake of running to form, of teaching the use of rolling, sonorous tones at the expense of expression. As a matter of fact, the conversational tone, made in the front of the mouth, is the most effective.

"I am teaching the telephone girl a low, gentle, modulated tone of voice that will reach subscribers much more distinctly than loud, rough tones. The direction to smile is only carrying out the idea of expression. The man at the other end knows instinctively from the tone of the voice, without seeing the girl, that she is smiling. He is soothed instead of irritated, the girl is saved many gruff retorts, and the service is bettered for all concerned."

A Musical Chord That Shattered a Huge Glass Bowl

1914

FORCE OF VIBRATION.

A Musical Chord That Shattered a Huge Glass Bowl.

Discussing the proposition that a wineglass can be broken or shattered to pieces by a musical chord, Edgar Lucien Larkin in the New York American says:

"I had a huge glass bowl one foot in diameter resting on its glass stand. The flint glass was from one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch thick. I rosined a violin bow, drew it across the edge, and the entire hemisphere of solid glass disintegrated into hundreds of small pieces. The sound of breaking into fragments was entirely unknown to me, a crackling or grinding, and the bits of glass flew far apart.

"I had used this same bowl before classes for several years with violin bows. But on this particular day the students as well as I were surprised at the breaking and unearthly noise.

"The fact is I happened to vibrate the bowl with its key note — that is, set harmonic rate, which means the precise rate with which it was able to vibrate to send forth that note, for notes are rates of vibration, and they all obey rigid and beautiful harmonic mathematical laws, and these agree with other set and fixed laws."