In this module, we will isolate the unit of the sentence, learn its conventional uses, and see how sentences help us to organize our ideas to identify which items belong together and which should be separated.
Each conventionally complete standardized English sentence has a grammatical subject, a predicate (which can take the minimal form of a verb), and punctuation. That’s good to know, but you also need variety in your sentence length and structure. Gary Provost illustrates why:
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say, “Listen to this, it is important.”
College-level writing involves a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. This need to create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear is not simply a requirement of creative writing; you need to bear it in mind for lab reports and abstracts, too, since the readers of those genres of writing will no more enjoy monotony than you do. Provost’s quotation invites you to listen, so we’ve illustrated the phenomenon of monotony in the following video, too. [1]
In order to create this variety, you need to know how sentences work and how to create them. In this section we will identify the parts of sentences and learn how they fit together to create music in writing.
- Provost, Gary. 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, Signet:1985, pp. 60–61. ↵
