Example, an old adage has it, is not proof. But then, apart from mathematics and litigation, proof is not everywhere required, while examples have various uses. “Example is the school of mankind,” wrote Edmund Burke, “and they learn at no other.” In his book Farnsworth’s Classical English Style (2020), Ward Farnsworth holds that “examples show how principles work, and the principles can be adapted to less dramatic settings. You can learn from the Gettysburg Address even if you aren’t writing the Gettysburg Address.” In Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric (2010), the professor at the University of Texas School of Law adds that “examples also can do more than exposition to teach lessons about the beauty of a device, about its technical details, and about the occasions for its use.” 

In these two titles, along with Farnsworth’s Classical English Metaphor (2016) and now Farnsworth’s Classical English Argument, examples abound, hundreds upon hundreds of them.