All writers take special care in creating a special arrangement of and relationship with words.  Understanding the slight or delicate variations of syntax, and the effect it creates, or the purpose it fulfills is crucial to understanding a passage.  Make a section in your journal for each of the following categories of syntax and add examples to each category as you discover them through reading, listening, observing, and sensing life around you.

Experiment with improving your style by adding more of these interesting sentence structures to your own writing;  however, heed Daniel Defoe's warning:  The perfect style is one "in which a man speaking to five hundred people, of all common and various capacities, Idiots and Lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all."

The parentheses are used to whisper  a witty aside to the reader.  Note how the parenthesis in each of the following examples makes the remark seem more confidential:

"When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter." George Orwell

The dash is a sentence interrupter used to announce a series, or elaborate on a previously stated general idea.  When this second strategy is used, the meaning of the sentence changes drastically.  In fact, many times good writers will use a dash to create an anomaly, a departure from the expected, an abnormality.  Note how the dashes in the following examples create an unexpected meaning or satire.

"The chamber of commerce was in the Motijheel Commercial Area, right around the corner--and therefore thirty or forty minutes away--from the Biman airline office."   P. J. O'Rourke

The colon is used to announce.  Notice how the opening statement in the following examples prepare the reader for an announcement which flows smoothly after the colon.

"I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary.  It went like this: Fault:  Deficiency, lack, want of something . . ."   Meena Alexander

The semicolon is used to separate different but related sentences.  Notice how the semicolons in the following examples also create balanced expressions.

"But the poor lady was wrong;  it was not a swan that they had hatched;  it was an eagle."   Lytton Stratchey

Parallelism is the repetition of similar beginnings to create balanced expressions.  This is done when the writer wants to express a pair or series of ideas.  Making each item parallel--making each item look alike grammatically--provides emphasis and establishes rhythm and balance.

One of the most powerful aspects of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address was his use of parallel expressions.  Notice how the repeated verbs in following two sentences create parallelism.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hard ship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

about              between             over
above              beyond              past
across              but                   since
after                by                     through
against             concerning        throughout
along               down                to
amid                during               toward
among             except                under
around             for                    underneath
at                    from                 until
before              in                     unto
behind             into                   u
below              like                   upon
beneath            of                     with
 beside            off                    within
 besides           on                    without

Prepositions are used by good writers to interrupt or end the sentence with lively description.   Note the examples:

" The train smells of oil and soot and orange peels and lurches groggily as we rock our way inland." Joy Kogawa
 

An appositive is another noun, set off by double commas or dashes, that renames the subject.  Notice how the appositives in the examples that follow, add additional information to the person, place, or thing just mentioned.

Participle phrases beginning with a word ending in "ing." Notice how the participle phrases in the following examples add more information to the noun of the sentence.

"We found a sleepy hillside and sprawled out on it, soaking up the early-spring sunshine."  Gretel Ehlrich

An absolute phrase includes a noun immediately followed by a participle--a verb form ending in "ing" or in the past tense which describes the noun--and a prepositional phrase or two or other types of adjective phrases.  The absolute phrase is underlined in the examples that follow.

"One day he brought home a baby girl, wrapped up inside his brown western-style greatcoat."    Maxine Hong Kingston

A cumulative sentence is one in which the emendations are added after the main clause is completed.  In the following example, the main sentence--the underlined portion--comes first, and is followed by a number of descriptive phrases.

"I could live two days in a den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses."  Annie Dillard

A periodic sentence is one in which the emendations are added before the main clause is completed.  In the following example, the main sentence?the underlined portion--comes last, and is preceded by a number of descriptive phrases.

"Curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses, I could live two days in a den."  Annie Dillard

A strung-along sentence is one in which the emendations are added in the middle, separating the main clause into two parts.  These emendations can come in the form of absolute phrases, participle phrases, prepositions, gerunds, etc. and can be punctuated with a colon, a comma, a double comma, a dash, parentheses, etc.  Here is an example:

 "I have the impression that many people, if they think of this city at all, consider Duluth a cold kind of joke, a Peoria of the North, the last outpost on the northernmost edge of the middle of nowhere."      Barton Sutter
 

Most of the suggestions thus far have  been ways to make longer sentences by combining or emending shorter ones.  At the same time, it must be cautioned that every word added must add a new meaning in the sentence.  Note the conciseness of the following two examples:

"Above and below the ship, this blue."    John Blight

The conciseness exercise implies that every repeated word is unnecessary.  We all know that is not true.   Sometimes repeated words are necessary for emphasis.  Sometimes repetition is needed in the topic sentences so that they echo the thesis more clearly.  But perhaps the most graceful use is the subtle repetition of an idea.  In the essay "Dull and Out of It"  from Cold Comfort, Life at the Top of the Map , Barton Sutter refers to Duluth as "the last outpost on the northernmost edge of the middle of nowhere."   Elsewhere in his collection of essays called Cold Comfort, he refers to Duluth as "the northern edge of the known universe."   Notice how Sutterís changed description of the repeated idea adds to his description of Duluthís remoteness.  Can you make other phrases that would similarly describe the isolation of Duluth?

The best practice for variety is to revisit an old essay and change the wording so that a better variety exists by beginning in more ways than Subject first.  Use the following suggestions:

A.  Begin with an adverb: a word that describes the action of the sentence.  Other neat adverbs can be found in the chapter on DICTION.   Here are some examples:

"Exactly why the Germans banished intelligence is a vast and largely unanswered question."  Neil Postman

B.  Begin with an adjective: Any of the words listed in the assignment described above are adjectives since they describe people.  Begin a sentence with one of those words or with any word that describes some other person, place or thing in the same sentence.  Other neat adjectives can be found in the chapter on DICTION.  Here are some examples:

"Subdued, resigned, Papa's life--all our lives--took on a pattern that would hold for the duration of the war."  Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

C.  Begin with an infinitive: Here are some examples:

"To explain what I am getting at, I find it helpful to refer to two films, which taken together embody the main lines of my argument."    Neil Postman

D.  Begin with a subordinate clause:

Commonly used  Subordinate Conjunctions:

after, although, as, as much as, because, before,
how, if, in order that, inasmuch as, provided, since,
than, that, though, unless, until, when, where, while.

Here are some examples:

"Although there was no evidence of subversion, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the expulsion of West Coast Japanese-Americans--many of them born in this country--from their homes and businesses."   Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

E.  Begin with a gerund: Begin with a verb form (ending in "ing") that acts as the subject of the sentence.  Here are some examples:

Acting responsibly is an important concept to consider when discovering freedom.

"Looking at it, holding it, thinking of things to do with it displace other activities once thought essential."   Neil Postman
 

F.  Begin with a participle phrase:  Here are some examples:

"Breathing hard, balancing a tin of water on his head, a small boy climbed toward us."  Gordon Parks

G.  Begin with a list of noun phrases:  Here are some examples:

"The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos--all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt."     George Orwell

For variety and a change in pace, shorter sentences are needed.  One way to do this is to combine a few two or three word sentences into one.  This is called a short and simple sentence.  Examples follow:

"He ruminates, he dreams, he remembers."  Malcolm Cowley

The following sentences are called inverted because the natural order is switched.  This is usually done for emphasis, but always creates variety.  Note the list of examples that follow:

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