American College Grammar_Chapter 15-Roumen Dinneff

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Achieving Variety

In a paragraph or an essay, sentences do not stand one by one. Rather, each stands in relation to those before and after it. To make sentences work together effectively, the writer must vary their length, their emphasis, and their word order to reflect the importance and complexity of ideas. Although experienced writers generally find that variety takes care of itself as they commit ideas to paper, inexperienced writers often have difficulty achieving variety without guidance and practice. Sentence variety is the spice of lively writing.

                A series of similar sentences will prove monotonous and ineffective, as this passage illustrates:

               Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met on April 9, 1865. Their meeting place was the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. They met to work out the terms for the surrender of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. One great chapter of American life ended with their meeting, and another began. Grant and Lee were bringing the Civil War to its virtual finish. Other armies still had to surrender, and the fugitive Confederate government would struggle desperately and vainly. It would try to find some way to go on living with its chief support gone. Grant and Lee had signed the papers, however, and it was all over in effect.

Individually, these eight sentences are perfectly clear and adequately detailed. But together they do not make pleasant reading, and their relative importance is obscure. Their lengths are roughly the same, they are about equally detailed, and they all consist of one or two main clauses beginning with the subject. At the end of the passage we have a sense of names, dates, and events but no sure sense of how they relate.

                Now compare the preceding passage with the actual passage written by Bruce Catton.

               When Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met in the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, to work out the terms for the surrender of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, a great chapter in American life came to a close, and a great new chapter began.

               These men were bringing the Civil War to its virtual finish. To be sure, other armies had yet to surrender, and for a few days the fugitive Confederate government would struggle desperately and vainly, trying to find some way to go on living with its chief support gone. But in effect it was all over when Grant and Lee signed the papers.

Bruce Catton, “Grant and Lee”

The information in these two passages is almost identical. The differences lie chiefly in the sentence variety of the second and the sharp focus on the end of the war which that variety underscores. Catton’s four sentences range from eleven to fifty-five words, and only one of the sentences begins with its subject. The first sentence brings together in one long when-clause all the details of place, time, and cause contained in the first three sentences of the first passage. The sentence is periodic, and the suspense it creates forces us to focus on the significance of the meeting described in the two main clauses at the end. The very brief second sentence, contrasting sharply with the one before it, quickly recapitulates the reason for the meeting. The third sentence, a long, cumulative one, reflects the lingering obstacles to peace. And the fourth sentence, another short one, tersely indicates the futility of future struggle. Together, the four sentences clearly, even dramatically, convey that the meeting ended the war and marked a turning point in American history.

a              Vary the patterns and the lengths of your sentences to keep your readers alert and involved.

If you repeat any sentence pattern too often, you will bore your readers, so it is a good idea to learn and practice variations in the basic writing pattern. The basic pattern in modern English writing is subject + predicate.

               Subject                                     Predicate

                My father and my stepmother left on the noon plane to Atlanta.

The most common variation on this basic pattern is to begin with some kind of adverbial opener.

                Adverbial Phrase: By the late afternoon, they will be at home.

Adverbial Clause: Because they live so far away, we see them only once or twice a year.

                Simple Adverb: Tomorrow they will telephone.

                Another variation is to begin with a participle or a participial phrase that serves as an adjective.

                Participle: Smiling, he walked confidently into the room.

Participial Phrase: Stunned by the stock market crash, many brokers committed suicide.

                Sentences also can open with an infinitive phrase or a coordinating conjunction.

Infinitive Phrase: To protect my mother, I’d made up stories of a secret marriage that for some strange reason never got known.

Sherwood Anderson

Coordinating Conjunction: But, say you, it is a question of interest, and if you make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

Abraham Lincoln

                The repetition of the common pattern subject + predicate is less monotonous than the repetition of the other patterns, but it grows tiresome if it is combined with choppy, disconnected sentences. In the first passage below, the sentences all begin with the subject; they are all about the same length; and they are all short. They are clear and understandable, but notice the improvement in the second passage, where the combined and embedded elements create a pleasing variety in both length and sentence structure.

Repetitious

               He dived quickly into the sea. He peered through his mask. The watery world turned darker. A school of fish went by. The distant light glittered on their bodies. He stopped swimming. He waited. He thought the fish might be chased by a shark. He satisfied himself that there was no shark. He continued down. He heard only one sound. That was his breathing apparatus. It made a bubbling noise in operation.

Improved

               He dived quickly into the sea, peering through his mask at a watery world that turned darker as he went down. A school of fish went by, the distant light glittering on their bodies, and he stopped swimming and waited a moment to see if the fish might be chased by a shark. Satisfying himself that there was no shark, he continued down. The only sound he heard was the bubbling noise of his breathing apparatus.

                The improved version combines thoughts and reduces the number of sentences in the passage. The repetition of the pronoun “he” is also reduced and the sentence patterns are more varied and interesting.

                As a matter of fact, neither short sentences nor long sentences are intrinsically better. But in most contemporary writing, sentences tend to vary from about ten words on the short side to about forty words on the long, with an average of between fifteen and twenty-five words, depending on the writer’s purpose and style.

                b             Avoid strings of brief and simple sentences.

                A series of brief and simple sentences is both monotonous and hard to understand because it forces the reader to sort out relations among ideas. If you find that you depend on brief, simple sentences, work to increase variety by combining some of them into longer units that emphasize and link new and important ideas while de-emphasizing old or incidental information.

                The following example shows how a string of simple sentences can be revised into an effective piece of writing.

Weak

               The moon is now drifting away from the earth. It moves away at the rate of about one inch a year. Our days on earth are getting longer. They grow a thousandth of a second longer every century. A month might become forty-seven of our present days long. We might eventually lose the moon altogether. Such great planetary movement rightly concerns astronomers. It need not worry us. The movement will take 50 million years.

Revised

               The moon is now drifting away from the earth, moving at the rate of about one inch a year. And at the rate of a thousandth of a second or so every century, our days on earth are getting longer. Someday, a month will be forty-seven of our present days long, if we don’t eventually lose the moon altogether. Such great planetary movement rightly concerns astronomers, but it need not concern us. It will take 50 million years.

In the first passage the choppy movement of the nine successive simple sentences leaves the reader with nine independent facts and a lame conclusion. The revision retains all the facts of the original but compresses them into five sentences that are structured to emphasize main ideas and to show relations among them. The three most important facts of the passage—the moon’s movement (sentence 1), our lengthening days (sentence 2), and the enormous span of time involved (sentence 5)—appear, respectively, in the opening main clause of a cumulative sentence, in the ending main clause of a periodic sentence, and in a terse simple sentence. The arrangement of the third sentence stresses the dramatic possibility that we may lose the moon. And the coordination of the fourth sentence accentuates with “but” the contrast between the astronomers’ concerns and ours, thus preparing the way for the highly emphatic brief sentence at the end.

                c              Avoid excessive compounding.

                Because compound sentences are usually just simple sentences linked with conjunctions, a series of them will be as weak as a series of brief simple sentences, especially if the clauses of the compound sentences are all about the same length.

Weak

               The hotel beach faces the south, and the main street runs along the north side of the hotel. The main street is heavily traveled and often noisy, but the beach is always quiet and sunny. It was Sunday afternoon, and we were on the hotel beach. We lay stretched out on the sand, and the sun poured down on us.

Revised

               The main street, heavily traveled and often noisy, runs along the north side of the hotel. But on the south side the hotel beach is always quiet and sunny. On Sunday we lay there stretched out on the sand, letting the sun pour down on us.

The first passage creates a seesaw effect. The revision, with some main clauses changed into modifiers and repositioned, is both clearer and more emphatic.

Exercise 1. Rewrite the following paragraph to increase variety so that important ideas receive greater emphasis than supporting information. You will have to change some main clauses into modifiers and then combine and reposition the modifiers and the remaining main clauses.

               Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of America’s first great writers, and he was descended from a judge. The judge had presided at some of the Salem witch trials, and he had condemned some men and women to death. Hawthorne could never forget his piece of family history, and he always felt guilty about it. He never wrote about his ancestor directly, but he did write about the darkness of the human heart. He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and in those books he demonstrated his favorite theme of a secret sin.

                d             Vary sentence beginnings.

Most English sentences begin with their subjects.

The defendant’s lawyer relentlessly cross-examined the stubborn witness for two successive days.

However, an unbroken sequence of sentences beginning with the subject quickly becomes monotonous, as shown by the altered passage on Grant and Lee at the start of this chapter. Your final arrangement of sentence elements should always depend on two concerns: the relation of a sentence to those preceding and following it and the emphasis required by your meaning. When you do choose to vary the subject-first pattern, you have several options.

                Adverb modifiers can often be placed at a variety of spots in a sentence. Consider the different emphases created by moving the adverbs in the basic sentence above.

For two successive days, the defendant’s lawyer relentlessly cross-examined the stubborn witness.

Relentlessly, the defendant’s lawyer cross-examined the stubborn witness for two successive days.

Relentlessly, for two successive days, the defendant’s lawyer cross-examined the stubborn witness.

Notice that the last sentence, with both modifiers at the beginning, is periodic and thus highly emphatic.

                Beginning the sentence with a participial phrase also postpones the subject and sometimes creates a periodic sentence.

The lawyer thoroughly cross-examined the witness and then called the defendant herself to testify.

Having thoroughly cross-examined the witness, the lawyer called the defendant herself to testify.

                When the relation between two successive sentences demands, you may begin the second with a coordinating conjunction or with a transitional expression such as first, for instance, however, in addition, moreover, or therefore.

The witness expected to be dismissed after his first long day of cross-examination. He was not; the defendant’s lawyer called him again the second day.

The witness expected to be dismissed after his first long day of cross-examination. But he was not; the defendant’s lawyer called him again the second day.

The prices of clothes have risen astronomically in recent years. The cotton shirt that once cost $6.00 and now costs $25.00 is an example.

The prices of clothes have risen astronomically in recent years. For example, a cotton shirt that once cost $6.00 now costs $25.00.

                Occasionally, an expletive construction—”it” or “there” plus a form of “be”—may be useful to delay and thus emphasize the subject of the sentence.

                His judgment seems questionable, not his desire.

                It is his judgment that seems questionable, not his desire.

                e              Invert the normal word order.

                Inverted sentences such as “Up came the dawn” and “Mutton he didn’t like” are infrequent in modern prose. Because the word order of subject, verb, and object or complement is so strongly fixed in English, an inverted sentence can be emphatic.

Harry had once been a dog lover. Then his neighbors’ barking dogs twice raced through his garden. Now Harry detests all dogs, especially barking dogs.

Harry had once been a dog lover. Then his neighbors’ barking dogs twice raced through his garden. Now all dogs, especially barking dogs, Harry detests.

                Inverting the normal order of subject, verb, and complement can be useful in two successive sentences when the second expands on the first.

Critics have not been kind to Presidents who have tried to apply the ways of private business to public affairs. Particularly explicit was the curt verdict of one critic of President Hoover: Mr. Hoover was never President of the United States; he was four years chairman of the board.

Adapted from Emmet John Hughes,

“The Presidency vs. Jimmy Carter”

                Inverted sentences used without need are artificial. Avoid descriptive sentences such as “Up came Larry and down went Cindy’s spirits.”

                f              Mix different types of sentences.

                Most written sentences make statements. Occasionally, however, questions, commands, or, more rarely, exclamations may enhance variety. Questions may set the direction of a paragraph, as in What does a detective do? or How is the percentage of unemployed workers calculated? More often, though, the questions used in exposition or argumentation do not require answers but simply emphasize ideas that readers can be expected to agree with. These rhetorical questions are illustrated  in the following passage.

Another word that has ceased to have meaning due to overuse is “attractive.” “Attractive” has become verbal chaff. Who, by some stretch of language and imagination, cannot be described as attractive? And just what is it that attractive individuals are attracting?

Diane White

                Imperative sentences occur frequently in an explanation of a process, particularly in directions, as this passage on freewriting illustrates.

The idea is simply to write for ten minutes (later on, perhaps fifteen or twenty). Don’t stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing.

Peter Elbow

                Notice that the authors of these examples use questions and commands not merely to vary their sentences but to achieve some special purpose. Variety occurs because a particular sentence type is effective for the context, not because the writer set out to achieve variety for its own sake.