This collection of essays on literary composition sets forth rhetorical principles formulated from a close inductive study of contemporary American prose. The first essay develops a system of analyzing sentences by structural levels and outlines a generative rhetoric for the sentence consisting of the processes of "addition,""direction of modification,""levels of abstraction," and "textures." In the second essay, "A Lesson from Hemingway," the words, sentences, and general style of "The Undefeated" are analyzed. The third essay takes up the practice of professional writers in the use of sentence openers--adverbial units, verbal groups, and inverted constructions. In "A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph," the concepts developed for sentence creation are applied to paragraph composition by comparing the paragraph to a "cumulative sentence." The fifth essay defends the nominative absolute construction and uses it to measure the practical value of books on rhetoric. The last article discusses the basis for and the importance of the distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive modifiers. (LH)