General Clinton, concerned about what General Howe was planning and doing, made use of a mask to write a secret message in a let
ter to General Burgoyne. Before writing the letter, Clinton had placed an hourglass-shaped mask on a piece of paper and then had formed the secret message within that shape.
The unmasked letter had enough false information in it to fool any American who happened to see it. But when Burgoyne viewed the letter with the mask, he read Clinton's view of the real situation: Howe has made a bad move; I don't have enough men to do anything about it.
The author’s main purpose in this excerpt is to
describe a form of code writing using an example.
explain the mistakes of General Howe during the war.
entertain the reader with a humorous story of miscommunication.
argue that using a mask is the best method for sending secret messages.
The author’s main purpose in this excerpt is to describe a form of code writing using an example.
In the text in question, the author describes how General Clinton inserted a secret message in a text apparently unrelated to the information that he wanted to convey. That is, through a real situation, he exemplifies how a secret message could be introduced that changed the course of history.
A simple sentence consists of only one clause. A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. A complex sentence has at least one independent clause plus at least one dependent clause. A set of words with no independent clause may be an incomplete sentence, also called a sentence fragment.
A simile compares 2 things using like or as. Examples such as "stood out like a sore thumb" compare something (Sanjay) with something completely unlike the first (a sore thumb) connecting the two with like or as. Use this when looking for a simile in the future.
