The ManicaPost
Friday Lessons with Uncle Jay
A good sentence is clear, unambiguous, and interesting.
Following the rules of grammar can be helpful, but breaking those rules can help too, if done right.
Got that?
Don’t try imitating Shakesphere unless you’re trying to be laughed at.
The context also matters.
Are you writing a business proposal, is it personal, or it’s a narrative?
All this shapes the sentence construction.
Here are some guidelines for writing good sentences:
Keep them as short as you can.
Sometimes they’ll end up long.
Long sentences can be okay.
A long sentence that is as short as it can be is much better than a long sentence that could be shortened.
Short sentences are usually better than long ones. (That’s a short sentence.)
Short sentences are usually better than long ones, although sometimes a long sentence is necessary. (That’s a longer sentence.)
Use plain words when you can, but use the exact right word even if it’s not a simple word.
As Mark Twain said: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Short words are almost always better than long ones.
Try to avoid adverbs.
I would rather read “He quipped” than “he said, humorously.”
Try to avoid adjectives, too.
After you write, read aloud what you’ve written.
If it feels strange for you to speak it, it will be strange to the reader.
Read a lot.
You will see the things people do to make sentences unclear, uninteresting, or unpleasant.
You will see the things people do that are effective at making their writing clear and a pleasure to read.
A good sentence can be understood on the first reading.
It contains an actor (subject, noun), an action (predicate, verb), and something acted upon (object, noun).
It is grammatically correct.
The words are correctly spelled.
Examples “All thinking men are atheists.” – Ernest Hemingway , A Farewell to Arms “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ?
John Steinbeck “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice “How can you respect the world when you see it’s being run by a bunch of kids turned old?” — John Updike, Rabbit is Rich·
“I wasn’t good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.”
– Rosamunde Pilcher – Wild Mountain Thyme “I don’t have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories.
I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.”
— Maeve Binchy “Husband and wife did not need to speak words to one another, not just from the old habit of living together but because in that one long-ago instant at least out of the long and shabby stretch of their human lives, even though they knew at the time it wouldn’t and couldn’t last, they had touched and become as God when they voluntarily and in advance forgave one another for all that each knew the other could never be.”
(That’s one very long sentence) — William Faulkner, Go Down Moses.
