Not for the Faint-of-Heart

I love long sentences. I also love short sentences. In fact, give me a well-wrought sentence, and I’ll be happy for the whole time I read it. In Joseph Williams’ book Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 8th edition, he includes a chapter on “shape.” Prior to the chapter he includes these quotations: “The [...]

A Delicious Four Course Sentence

I lighted on this sentence in the November, 1963 edition of Horizon Magazine (which happens to be my birth month). Here is the very type of a long sentence that could not be shortened and still say the same thing. Here is why I love and demand long sentences and why people who cannot read or write long [...]

Another reason to love long sentences

There is what cannot be said any other way. I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shaken off some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, however she spoke to to me, in half sentences, single words, stock phrases of contemporary jargon, in scarcely [...]

Writing Harmony

Last night, when I was earnestly wishing I was fast asleep, a thought came to me that I thought (it being very late or very early) was quite profound. It went something like this, though of course all the profound illumination of the insight has faded with the light of day: The soul delights in harmony. [...]

On the Necessity For Long Sentences

We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. That is the [...]