The variability that he shows in the Greek word order is wider than in English. In both languages it is controlled by usage, by what is habitual and therefore expected; and this fact seems to be ignored by Dionysius. Even a Greek could not shape a sentence at his own will without reference to the habit of the language. But in this respect Greek usage, because the Greek could rely on showing sentence relations by inflection, was less restrictive than English usage. For English, then, it is not true to say that there is no sentence norm, no normal or natural order. That the norm is not determined by logic in the sense of abstract analysis is true for either, or any, language; but in modern languages, much more than in Greek, it is restricted by usage. Every careful translator has found his efforts to convey Greek style hampered by the inferior variability of modern sentence habits. Taken more generally, however, the contention of Dionysius is sound and suggestive. It is that the order of words in a sentence is not predetermined by logic, that it is freely adaptable, and that this adaptation constitutes a large element in effectiveness. Having thus vindicated the right of the speaker or writer to deal with the order of his words artistically, unfettered by logic, Dionysius proceeds to inquire in what artistic shaping consists. The functions of _compositio_ [the tasks of sentence movement] seem to me to be three: (1) to discern what goes naturally with what to make a beautiful and satisfying combination; (2) to know how to make systematically out of these potential agreements a better harmony; (3) if revision is still necessary, whether abridgement, expansion, or alteration, to know how to work out the adaptation as the potential values demand. The scope of each of these I will explain more clearly by using certain analogies from the industrial arts with which all are familiar: house-building, ship-building, and the like. When a builder has provided himself with the material from which he intends to construct a house—stones, timbers, tiling, and all the rest—he then puts together the structure from these, studying the following three things: what stone, timber, and brick can be united with what other stone, timber, and brick; next, how each piece of the material that is being so united should be set, and on which of its faces; thirdly, if anything fits badly, how that particular thing can be chipped and trimmed and made to fit exactly. And the shipwright proceeds in just the same way. So, I say, they also should work whose task is to compose sentences well.[18]