DEFINITION OF A SENTENCE
Before defining the parts of a
sentence,
it might be wise
to define a sentence itself. A
sentence
is a group of
words containing a subject and
predicate
(defined
below). Sometimes, the subject is
"understood," as in a
command: "[You] go next door and
get a
cup of sugar."
That probably means that the
shortest
possible complete
sentence is something like "Go!" A
sentence ought to
express a thought that can stand
by
itself, but one should watch out for SENTENCE
FRAGMENTS or incomplete sentences [more on this
later].
The various Types of
Sentences,
structurally, will be defined,
with
examples, to show sentence variety. Sentences
are also defined according to function:
declarative (most
of the sentences we use), interrogative (which
ask a question "What's
your name?"), exclamatory
("There's a fire in the
kitchen!"), and imperative ("Don't
you dare listen to MOE'S midi 'Sweet Caroline'
instead of studying!")
NOTES ON SENTENCE
VARIETY
In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (IIiv),
we see that great "stuffed cloak-bag of guts,"
Falstaff, in debate with his good friend Prince
Hal, the future King of England. After a night
of debauchery together, he is imploring his
young friend not
to forget him when Hal becomes King. The banter
goes on, but the best part of it is
Falstaff's
last few sentences on the matter (talking about
himself
here his favorite subject):
But to say I know more harm in him than in
myself, were to say more than I know. That he
is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do
witness it; but that he is, saving your
reverence, a
whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and
sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! if to be
old and merry be a sin, then many an old host
that I know is
damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then
Pharaoh's
lean kine
are to be loved. No, my good lord;
banish
Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but
for
sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true
Jack
Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and
therefore more
valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff,
banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him
thy
Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and
banish
all the world.
The speech is quite a ramble, filled with
Falstaff's lively good spirits. How can the
Prince follow this?
He does, with two little sentences:
I do. I will.
And there you have it. The prince knows he must
someday, soon, renounce his life with Falstaff
and turn to the responsibilities of
ruling England. All the kinetic energy of
Falstaff, manifested in the
turns of phrase and rhythm in this
speech, has been dammed up, thwarted and turned
back by
those two little sentences, four little
words.
That's what variety of sentence length
can do.
Great expansiveness followed up by the bullwhip
crack of a one-liner. It's not that one
kind of
sentence is better than the other (although the
taste of the twentieth-century readers favors
the terse, the economical). It's just that
there are two
different
kinds of energies here, both potent. Use
them
both, and your prose will be energized.
The trouble is that many writers, unsure
of
themselves, are leery of long sentences because
they
fear the run-on, that troll under the
bridge,
forgetting that it is often better to risk
imperfection than
boredom.
What we need, then, is practice in
handling
long sentences. It's easy to feel confident in
writing shorter sentences, but if our prose is
made up
entirely of shorter structures, it begins to
feel like "See Dick run. See Jane jump. See
Jane jump on
Puff." Primer style, it's called, and it would
drive a reader crazy after a while.
RUN-ONS AND
LENGTH
Remember that a really
long sentence and a run-on sentence are
not the same thing.
Joseph Williams's fine book, Style: Toward
Clarity and Grace (Univ. of Chicago: 1990),
enlists this monster of a sentence from Thomas
Hooker, father of American democracy and
founder of Hartford, Connecticut:
Now if nature should intermit her course and
leave altogether, though it were but for
awhile, the observation of her own laws; if
those principal and mother elements of the
world, whereof all things in this lower world
are made, should lose the qalities which now
they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch
erected over our heads should loosen and
dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should
forget their wonted motions, and by irregular
volubility turn themselves any way as it might
happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven
which now as a giant doth run his unwearied
course, should, as it were through a
languishing faintness, begin to stand and to
rest himself; if the moon should wander from
her beaten way, the times and seasons of the
year blend themselves by disordered and
confused mixture, the winds breathe out their
last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth
be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits
of the earth pine away as children at the
withered breasts of their mother no longer able
to yield them relief what would become of man
himself, whom these things now do all serve?
from "Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity"
The modern reader might rebel at the complexity
of those clauses piled one upon the other, and
it does seem rather ponderous at first. In
fact, if you were to write such a sentence in
academic prose, your instructor would probably
call you in for a conference. But if, as
reader, you let yourself go a bit, there's a
well earned delight in finding yourself at the
end of such a sentence, having successfully
navigated its shoals. And, as writer (avoiding
such extremes), there's much to be learned by
devising such monsters and then cutting them
back to reasonable size.
Here are some tips about using long sentences
to your advantage. The ideas here are based
loosely on those in Williams' book, which is
highly recommended, but with some other
examples.
COORDINATION
Allow the complexity of a longer sentence to
develop after the verb, not before it. that
Make the
connection between subject and verb quick and
vigorous and then allow the sentence to do some
extra work, to cut a fancy figure or two. In
the completer (predicate), however, be careful
to develop the complex structures in parallel
form.
Read The Gettysburg Address and closely
examine the uses of parallelism in that classic
speech.
REPEATED
TERMS
As I have mentioned, one of the scariest
techniques for handling long sentences is the
repetition of a key term. It feels risky
because it goes against the grain of what
you've been taught about repetition. When
properly handled, though, repetition of key
words and phrases within a sentence and then
within a paragraph not only holds things
together but creates a rhythm that provides
energy and drives the meaning home.
The Swiss watchmakers' failure to capitalize on
the invention of the digital timepiece was both
astonishing and alarming astonishing in that
the Swiss had, since the beginnings of the
industrial revolution in Europe, been among the
first to capitalize on technical innovations,
alarming in that a tremendous industrial
potential had been lost to their chief
competitors, the watchmakers of Japan.
In the following sentence, from a speech by
John F. Kennedy (dedicating the Robert Frost
Library at Amherst College), observe how the
repeated, parallel phrases pile up meaning in
rhythmical waves:
"In America, our heroes have customarily run to
men of large accomplishments. But today this
college and country honors a man whose
contribution was not to our size but to our
spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our
insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our
self-comprehension. . . .
I look forward to a great future for
America, a future in which our country will
match its military strength with our moral
restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its
power with our purpose. I look forward to an
America which will not be afraid of grace and
beauty, which will protect the beauty of our
natural environment, which will preserve the
great old American houses and squares and parks
of our national past, and which will build
handsome and balanced cities for our future."
Amherst, Massachusetts -
October 26, 1963
The same principle can apply to repeated whole
sentences in a paragraph. Watch how President
Kennedy drives home his point in the famous
"Ich bin ein Berliner" speech:
There are many people in the world who really
don't understand, or say they don't, what is
the great issue between the free world and the
Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There
are some who say that communism is the wave of
the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there
are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can
work with the Communists. Let them come to
Berlin. And there are even a few who say that
it is true that communism is an evil system,
but it permits us to make economic progress.
Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to
Berlin.
Remarks in the Rudolph Wilde Platz,
West Berlin: June 26, 1963
The following is a sometimes humorous,
sometimes strident bit of lecturing from
American humorist George Carlin. Note the use
of parallel forms:
"The Paradox of our Time" George
Carlin
"The paradox of our time in history is that we
have taller buildings, but shorter tempers;
wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but
enjoy it less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
we have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgement;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too
recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay
up too late, get up too
tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and
pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced
our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too
often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a
life; we've added years to
life, not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the
street to meet the new neighbour.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner
space. We've done larger things,
but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the
soul.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.
We plan more, but accomplish less.
We've learned to rush, but not to wait.
We build more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than
ever, but have less communication.
These are the times of fast foods and slow
digestion; tall men, and short
character; steep profits, and shallow
relationships.
These are the times of world peace, but
domestic warfare; more leisure, but
less fun;
more kinds of food, but less nutrition.
These are days of two incomes, but more
divorce; of fancier houses, but
broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable
diapers, throw-away morality,
one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills
that do everything from cheer
to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is
much in the show window and
nothing in the stockroom; a time when
technology can bring this letter to
you, and a time when you can choose either to
share this insight, or to just
hit delete."
RENAMING AND AMPLIFYING THE
SUBJECT
Consider the following sentence, the way
information is appended and feels tacked on.
Hartford continues to lose its industrial base,
which means that more and more of its income
base depends on companies whose primary
business is paper shuffling.
Instead of using that clumsy "which clause,"
let's rename the event and follow it with a
dependent clause that amplifies the added noun.
Hartford continues to lose its industrial base,
an economic catastrophe in the making [that is]
characterized by an income base primarily
dependent on companies engaged in paper
shuffling.
A CHAIN OF MODIFYING
PHRASES
Try ending a sentence with a set of
prepositional phrases or phrases, each
beginning with a present or past participle.
This is a device that works well if used
infrequently; used too often, it can lead to
what some writers call purple prose as one
modifying phrase piles up against the one
before it. Used sparingly, however, it can
create a wonderful music.
"I see it now the wide sweep of the bay, the
glittering sands, the wealth of green infinite
and varied, the sea blue like the sea of a
dream, the crowd of attentive faces, the blaze
of vivid colour the water reflecting it all,
the curve of the shore, the jetty, the
high-sterned outlandish craft floating still,
and the three boats with the tired men from the
West sleeping, unconscious of the land and the
people and of the violence of sunshine.
And we all nodded at him: the man of
finance, the man of accounts, the man of law,
we all nodded at him over the polished table
that like a still sheet of brown water
reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces
marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by
love; our weary eyes looking still, looking
always, looking anxiously for something out of
life, that while it is expected is already gone
has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash
together with the youth, with the strength,
with the romance of illusions."
Joseph Conrad,
"Youth: A Narrative"
(1902)
RESUMPTIVE AND SUMMATIVE MODIFIERS
By adding modifying
phrases to the end of a sentence, a writer can
take the reader in new, sometimes unexpected
directions. A resumptive modifier picks up a
word or phrase from a sentence that seems to be
finished and then adds information and takes
the reader into new territory of thought.
Because resumptive modifiers are, by nature,
repetitive, they tend also to add a sense of
rhythm to a sentence. The following sentence
(borrowed from above) employs this strategy
twice:
"The Swiss watchmakers' failure to capitalize
on the invention of the digital timepiece was
both astonishing and alarming astonishing in
that the Swiss had, since the beginnings of the
industrial revolution in Europe, been among the
first to capitalize on technical innovations,
alarming in that a tremendous industrial
potential had been lost to their chief
competitors, the watchmakers of Japan.
A summative modifier quickly re-names or sums
up what was going on in an earlier part of the
sentence and then adds new information:
The defensive coaches taught risk-taking,
ball-hawking, and perpetual movement three
strategies that bewildered the opposition and
resulted in many bad passes, steals, and easy
fastbreak baskets."
VARIETY IN MODIFIER
PLACEMENT
USING INITIAL MODIFIERS:
Dependent Clause: Although she wasn't tired,
Maria went to sleep.
Infinitive Phrase: To please her mother, Maria
went to sleep.
Adverb: Quickly and quietly, Maria went to
sleep.
Participial Phrase: Hoping to feel better,
Maria went to sleep.
USING MID-SENTENCE MODIFIERS:
Appositive: Maria, an obedient child, went to
sleep.
Participial Phrase:
Maria, hoping to catch
up
on her rest, went to sleep.
USING TERMINAL MODIFIERS:
Present Participial Phrase: