appeal is to waste energy all around. In your efforts to be explicit do not

press exposition to the extent of dulness--the confines are not far distant and

you may arrive before you know it.

 

_Some Purposes of Exposition_

 

From what has been said it ought to be clear that, primarily, exposition weaves

a cord of understanding between you and your audience. It lays, furthermore, a

foundation of fact on which to build later statements, arguments, and appeals.

In scientific and purely "information" speeches exposition may exist by itself

and for itself, as in a lecture on biology, or on psychology; but in the vast

majority of cases it is used to accompany and prepare the way for the other

forms of discourse.

 

Clearness, precision, accuracy, unity, truth, and necessity--these must be the

_constant_ standards by which you test the efficiency of your expositions, and,

indeed, that of every explanatory statement. This dictum should be written on

your brain in letters most plain. And let this apply not alone to the _purposes_

of exposition but in equal measure to your use of the

 

_Methods of Exposition_

 

The various ways along which a speaker may proceed in exposition are likely to

touch each other now and then, and even when they do not meet and actually

overlap they run so nearly parallel that the roads are sometimes distinct rather