SENTENCE VARIETY
Definition of a Sentence
Before elaborating too much on the nature of sentences or trying to define a sentence's parts, it
might be wise to define a sentence itself. A sentence is a group of words containing a subject
and predicate. Sometimes, the subject is "understood," as in a command: "[You] go next door
and get a cup of sugar." That probably means that the shortest possible complete sentence is
something like "Go!" A sentence ought to express a thought that can stand by itself, but it would
be helpful to review the section on Sentence Fragments for additional information on thoughts
that cannot stand by themselves and sentences known as "stylistic fragments." The various
Types of Sentences, structurally, are defined, with examples, under the section on sentence
variety. Sentences are also defined according to function: declarative (most of the sentences we
use), interrogative (which ask a question — "What's your name?"), exclamatory ("There's a fire
in the kitchen!"), and imperative ("Don't drink that!")
In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (IIiv), we see that great "stuffed cloak-bag of guts,"
Falstaff, in debate with his good friend Prince Hal, the future King of England. After a night of
debauchery together, he is imploring his young friend not to forget him when Hal becomes King.
The banter goes on, but the best part of it is Falstaff's last few sentences on the matter (talking
about himself here — his favorite subject):
But to say I know more harm in him than in myself,
were to say more than I know. That he is old, the
more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but
that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster,
that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine
are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
The speech is quite a ramble, filled with Falstaff's lively good spirits. How can the Prince follow
this? He does, with two little sentences:
I do. I will.
And there you have it. The prince knows he must someday, soon, renounce his life with Falstaff
and turn to the responsibilities of ruling England. All the kinetic energy of Falstaff, manifested in
the turns of phrase and rhythm in this speech, has been dammed up, thwarted and turned back by
those two little sentences, four little words.
That's what variety of sentence length can do. Great expansiveness followed up by the
bullwhip crack of a one-liner. It's not that one kind of sentence is better than the other (although
the taste of the twentieth-century reader generally favors the terse, the economical). It's just that
there are two different kinds of energies here, both potent. Use them both, and your prose will be
energized.
The trouble is that many writers, unsure of themselves, are leery of long sentences because
they fear the run-on, that troll under the bridge, forgetting that it is often better to risk
imperfection than boredom.
What we need, then, is practice in handling long sentences. It is relatively easy to feel
confident in writing shorter sentences, but if our prose is made up entirely of shorter structures, it
begins to feel like "See Dick run. See Jane jump. See Jane jump on Puff." Primer style
(pronounced "primmer" in the U.S.A.), it's called, and it would drive a reader crazy after a while.
Run-ons and Length
First, review the section of the Guide that defines Run-on Sentences. Remember that a
really long sentence and a run-on sentence are not the same thing. Joseph Williams's fine book
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Univ. of Chicago: 1990), enlists this monster of a sentence
from Thomas Hooker, father of American democracy and founder of Hartford, Connecticut:
NOW IF NATURE SHOULD INTERMIT HER COURSE and leave altogether, though it were but for
awhile, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world,
whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qalities which now they have; if
the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if
celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves
any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven which now as a giant doth run
his unwearied course, should, as it were through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to
rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year
blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the
clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away
as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief — what
would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve?
—from Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
The modern reader might rebel at the complexity of those clauses piled one upon the other,
and it does seem rather ponderous at first. In fact, if you were to write such a sentence in
academic prose, your instructor would probably call you in for a conference. But if, as reader,
you let yourself go a bit, there's a well earned delight in finding yourself at the end of such a
sentence, having successfully navigated its shoals. And, as writer (avoiding such extremes),
there's much to be learned by devising such monsters and then cutting them back to reasonable
size.
Here are some hints about using long sentences to your advantage. The ideas here are based
loosely on those in Williams' book, which we highly recommend, but with our own examples.
Coordination
Allow the complexity of a longer sentence to develop after the verb, not before it. Click
HERE to read a 239-word sentence (not a run-on, though) that succeeds grammatically but fails
stylistically because it does way too much work before the subject-verb connection is made.
Make the connection between subject and verb quick and vigorous and then allow the sentence
to do some extra work, to cut a fancy figure or two. In the completer (predicate), however, be
careful to develop the complex structures in parallel form.
Click HERE to visit our section on parallel form, most of which
is taken from William Strunk's Elements of Style. Be sure to go
through our "slide show" on the Gettysburg Address and closely
examine the uses of parallelism in that classic speech.
Repeated Terms
One of the scariest techniques for handling long sentences is the repetition of a key term. It
feels risky because it goes against the grain of what you've been taught about repetition. When
properly handled, though, repetition of key words and phrases within a sentence and then within
a paragraph not only holds things together but creates a rhythm that provides energy and drives
the meaning home.
The Swiss watchmakers' failure to capitalize on the invention of the digital timepiece was both
astonishing and alarming — astonishing in that the Swiss had, since the beginnings of the
industrial revolution in Europe, been among the first to capitalize on technical innovations,
alarming in that a tremendous industrial potential had been lost to their chief competitors, the
watchmakers of Japan.
In the following sentences, from a speech by John F. Kennedy (dedicating the Robert Frost
Library at Amherst College), observe how the repeated, parallel phrases pile up meaning in
rhythmical waves:<
IN AMERICA, OUR HEROES HAVE CUSTOMARILY RUN to men of large accomplishments. But today
this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit,
not to our political beliefs but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our selfcomprehension. . . .
I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its
military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our
purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will
protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses
and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities
for our future.
Amherst, Massachusetts
October 26, 1963
The same principle can apply to repeated whole sentences in a paragraph. Watch how
President Kennedy drives home his point in the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech:
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is
the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There
are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there
are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to
Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it
permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
Remarks in the Rudolph Wilde Platz
West Berlin: June 26, 1963
Renaming and Amplifying the Subject
Consider the following sentence, the way information is appended and feels tacked on.

Hartford continues to lose its industrial base, which means that more and more of its
income base depends on companies whose primary business is paper shuffling.
Instead of using that clumsy "which clause," let's rename the event and follow it with a
dependent clause that amplifies the added noun.

Hartford continues to lose its industrial base, an economic catastrophe in the
making [that is] characterized by an income base primarily dependent on
companies engaged in paper shuffling.
A Chain of Modifying Phrases
Try ending a sentence with a set of prepositional phrases or phrases, each beginning with a
present or past participle. This device works well if used infrequently; used too often, it can lead
to what some writers call purple prose as one modifying phrase piles up against the one before it.
Used sparingly, however, it can create a wonderful music.
I SEE IT NOW — THE WIDE SWEEP OF THE BAY, THE GLITTERING SANDS, the wealth of green infinite
and varied, the sea blue like the sea of a dream, the crowd of attentive faces, the blaze of vivid
colour — the water reflecting it all, the curve of the shore, the jetty, the high-sterned outlandish
craft floating still, and the three boats with the tired men from the West sleeping, unconscious of
the land and the people and of the violence of sunshine.
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all
nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces,
lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes
looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is
expected is already gone — has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash — together with the youth,
with the strength, with the romance of illusions.
Joseph Conrad
"Youth: A Narrative" (1902)
Resumptive and Summative Modifiers
By adding modifying phrases to the end of a sentence, a writer can take the reader in new,
sometimes unexpected directions. A resumptive modifier picks up a word or phrase from a
sentence that seems to be finished and then adds information and takes the reader into new
territory of thought. Because resumptive modifiers are, by nature, repetitive, they tend also to
add a sense of rhythm to a sentence. The following sentence (borrowed from above) employs this
strategy twice:

The Swiss watchmakers' failure to capitalize on the invention of the digital
timepiece was both astonishing and alarming — astonishing in that the Swiss
had, since the beginnings of the industrial revolution in Europe, been among the
first to capitalize on technical innovations, alarming in that a tremendous industrial
potential had been lost to their chief competitors, the watchmakers of Japan.
A summative modifier quickly re-names or sums up what was going on in an earlier part
of the sentence and then adds new information:

The defensive coaches taught risk-taking, ball-hawking, and perpetual movement
— three strategies that bewildered the opposition and resulted in many bad passes,
steals, and easy fastbreak baskets.
Variety in Modifier Placement

Using Initial Modifiers:
1. Dependent Clause: Although she wasn't tired, Maria went to sleep.
2. Infinitive Phrase: To please her mother, Maria went to sleep.
3. Adverb: Quickly and quietly, Maria went to sleep.
4. Participial Phrase: Hoping to feel better, Maria went to sleep.
Using Mid-Sentence Modifiers:

5. Appositive: Maria, an obedient child, went to sleep.
6. Participial Phrase: Maria, hoping to catch up on her rest, went to
sleep.
Using Terminal Modifiers:


7. Present Participial Phrase: Maria went to sleep, hoping to please her
mother.
8. Past Participial Phrase/Adjectival Phrase: Maria went to sleep, lulled
by music.
9. Maria went to sleep, awakening to scary dreams, relieved when it was
morning.
Combining Modifiers:
10. Quickly and quietly, Maria, a young girl, went to sleep hoping to
please her mom.
(This section was prepared by Kristin Zook, a student in Professor Karyn Hollis's Tutor Training course at Villanova
University.)