Wed 1 Oct 2008
Andrew Kern recently wrote an article at Quiddity titled On the Necessity of Long Sentences. I enjoyed the post since I like long sentences. I love listening to British movies where the characters speak in long, flowing sentences filled with beautifully enunciated words, illustrating that when they are succinct it counts like a BAM! POW! in Batman.
The necessity of long sentences leads us to the necessity of reading the right sort of books to our children. If you start paying attention it won’t take long to figure out if your children are hearing long, rich passages or spending most of their time with the modern illness of short, bare sentences.
This also applies to their writing. Don’t forget to let them try imitating long sentences.
Try these single sentences on for size:
“SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17—, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn, and the brown old seaman, with the saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof. ”
Chapter 1, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
” Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled[a] among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.”
Luke 1:1-4, NKJV
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Sentence 1 of The Declaration of Independence
“Among the many remarkable things that are related of Furius Camillus, it seems singular and strange above all, that he, who continually was in the highest commands, and obtained the greatest successes, was five times chosen dictator, triumphed four times, and was styled a second founder of Rome, yet never was so much as once consul.”
Plutarch’s Lives Camillus, John Dryden translation
Plutarch goes from one long, complicated sentence to the next; it is glorious. Btw, it is possible reading long sentences will add intellectual satisfaction to your reading aloud times, keeping you from boredom apparent to your children when you fall asleep. Don’t underestimate your children; a childhood spent in the King James Version will be an education in writing.
“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”
Ephesians 2:1-3, NKJV
I recently tried to read a popular Christian self-help book (Can anyone spell oxymoron?), that appeared to be an entire book of BAM! POWs! written to a generation of readers who have perfected the skill of the non-sentence. ARRGGHH.
, it was a scene from my life.
