Writing Great Sentences

Writing Well

• Sentences are the basic building block of writing. Good sentences are the basic units of good writing.

Represent

• It is important that we represent ourselves to the world through writing that is effective – clear, precise, satisfyingly informative writing that reveals the individuality, sophistication and nuance of our thinking.

Revelation

• Writing that reveals not only to others, but to ourselves.

Sentences

• Our basic unit of communication is the sentence.

• How making our sentences longer or shorter can make them more:– Informative– Effective – Satisfying

Take Control

• Of building and trimming our sentences to improve our writing.

• Style

Francis Christensen

• Cumulative sentences built by adding modifying phrases to “kernel’ sentences or base clauses.

• Composition theorist in the 1960s

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVOiHJn3uA

• Jeffery Johnson

Prose Style

• The dance of language• Spontaneous• Creative• Generative

The Elements of StyleThe Elements of Style is a prescriptive American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk, Jr., in 1918 and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of fifty-seven "words often misspelled". It was much enlarged and revised by E.B. Whitefor publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of so-called Strunk & White, which Time magazine named in 2011 one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923

CIA Loves ‘The Elements of Style’It’s no secret that the Central Intelligence Agency values clarity, so it is no wonder that the federal agency relies on the writing tips from Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style. The CIA gives major props to the classic American writing guide in its own stylistic manual: Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications. The CIA also stresses in the 190-page guide how excessive and flowery language hinders the agency’s ability to protect the nation. "Good intelligence depends in large measure on clear, concise writing,” the foreword states. “The information CIA gathers and the analysis it produces mean little if we cannot convey them effectively.” Indeed.

Writing

• Is a purpose-driven activity

• Pay attention to the ounces and pounds will take care of themselves.

• Pay attention to your sentences, and most other writing problems take care of themselves.

Writing Projects

• Autobiography• Description of – How you mastered a skill– Learned a lesson

• Write a profile of someone who had a significant impact on your life.

A Sequence of Words

• This is what I mean when I call myself a writer, I construct sentences.– Don DeLillo

Sentences Come in All Shapes and Sizes

• Lots of different things can make them great:

• Precision and specificity• Dramatic impact• Sound• Ways in which they

direct the reader’s thinking

• Ways in which they reveal the writer’s mind

• Logical progression• Imagery

Thinking about individual sentences

• Not simply as just another brick in a wall of words

• Consider the sentence with the care we bring to poetry

• Set out in pursuit of greatness.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist

• I’m still hoping to write a great sentence. If I do, I’ll let you know– Michael Cunningham

Short sentences

• Jesus wept. • Shortest verse in the

New Testement

Famous Reply

• Offered by General Anthony McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st Airborne, when the Germans demanded his surrender during the Battle of the Bulge.

Short

• Nuts!

How to make sentences longer

• Longer sentences, when carefully crafted and tightly controlled, are essential keys to great writing.

Heart of Darkness

• She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. – Joseph Conrad

Its not how long you make it, but how you make it long

• More– Useful information– Specific detail– Explanation

• Informational texture• Propositional content

Practice, Practice, Practice.

• Practice