Lesson 2 | The Second Pass: Indent
New Terminology
Becoming familiar with the lingo is an important part of learning something new, whatever the discipline. You can’t learn how to play baseball well until you know what a “strike,” a “foul ball,” a “fly ball,” a “line drive,” or a “force play” is!
You can’t learn how to fix a car’s engine properly until you know what a “spark plug,” a “crankshaft,” “bearings,” a “torque wrench,” or a “micrometer” is!
You can’t learn to knit until you know what a “purl stitch” or a “yarn over” is, how to “cast on” or “cast off,” and how to follow a knitting pattern with abbreviations like “SK2P,” “M1R,” or “TBL”!
So before you can learn how to successfully make it through the Second Pass, there are some additional terms you need to become familiar with, besides what you’ve already learned in the last lesson.
Note for the grammatically-knowledgeable among us: Some of what I’m calling “phrases” here are actually “clauses,” technically speaking. But I’m calling them “phrases” in a non-technical sense because they occupy one phrase line.
These are phrases that are parallel to one another.
Notice how the blue phrases are parallel to each other: “therefore, preparing your minds” and “and being sober-minded” are equally subordinate to “set your hope fully.” Also, “to you” and “at the revelation” are equally subordinate to “that will be brought.”
This is a phrase that shows support, illustration, qualification, etc. for another phrase.
Each red phrase is indented past another phrase because it is subordinate to it. Ultimately, we will not only indent, but also add an arrow to and mark subordinate phrases with a relationship.
This is a phrase that is modified by one or more subordinate phrases.
Each green phrase in the example above is an anchor phrase, whether it is coordinate or subordinate, because each has another phrase subordinate to it. It is important to realize that any phrase that has something subordinate to it is an anchor phrase.
In Lesson 3, we will add arrows pointing to anchor phrases from their subordinate phrases.
You may have noticed that some of the anchor phrases in the example above were also subordinate phrases in the previous example! This is because some of the phrases are subordinate to one phrase, and are also an anchor for another phrase. This is very common, as anchor and subordinate phrases come in pairs: a subordinate phrase is subordinate to an anchor phrase, and an anchor phrase is qualified by a subordinate phrase.
This is the phrase in a sentence to which all the other phrases are grammatically subordinate. There are two important points to remember about main phrases:
1. The main phrase of a sentence will always be on the left margin.
The only exceptions to this are (a) Shorter quotations (1-4 sentences), where the whole sentence should be indented, and (b) Answers to questions (e.g. “Has God rejected his people? By no means!”). This is true even though main phrases are sometimes logically subordinate to each other. For instance, a sentence that begins with “for” may be showing the Ground for a previous sentence. However, we should leave that level of discourse analysis to Arcing and Bracketing.
2. Every main phrase contains a subject and a predicate (i.e. a verb and its direct object and/or other modifiers), and is able to stand alone.
For example, in 1 Peter 1:13 above, only the phrase “set your hope fully” could stand alone as a sentence. To test this, try saying “therefore, preparing your minds” and stopping there; it doesn't make sense. The same thing goes for every other subordinate phrase in the verse. Thus, only “set your hope fully” qualifies as a main phrase.
The only exception to this rule would be the introduction or conclusion to an epistle, e.g. “Grace to you.”
Now that you have this terminology down, we’re going to learn more about two of the types of subordinate phrases you learned in the last lesson: relative and genitive phrases.