You know the story of Archimedes. Given the task of making sure the king’s crown was pure gold, he puzzled and puzzled (til his puzzler was sore). Then he took a bath. And noticed the water level rise as he entered the tub.
Suddenly the answer came to him.
If the king’s crown displaced as much water as an equal amount of pure gold, then the king’s crown was pure.
“Eureka!” he shouted. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
And he ran through the streets, naked in his joy.
James Joyce talked about moments like this. He called them “epiphanies.” (Christians know the word from the church calendar and the Feast of Epiphany when they celebrate the “shining forth” of God’s glory.) Joyce coined the secular meaning in his manuscript Stephen Hero, when Stephen says:
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.
OK, class. Now what kind of sentences are those? Cumulative! Loose! Yes! They start with a simple beginning: “By an epiphany he meant…” and “He believed that…” Joyce would use loose sentence structures because his stream of consciousness style attempted to imitate human thought and interior dialogue. (Remember from sentence tip #3 that we tend to speak in loose sentence structure.)
A period sentence is the opposite of a loose sentece. Rather than beginning with the subject and predicate, a period sentence ends with the subject and predicate.
Here is a simple example from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Lewis from 1798:
If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
And this one attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run. Â
And this one by Dorothy Parker:
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. Â
(She has another hilarious one, but I thought I shouldn’t post it here. Wouldn’t be prudent.)Â
In each of these periodic sentences, the reader must wade through some introductory dependent clauses and descriptive phrases. Conditional sentences like these are nearly always periodic.
And you can see the effect they have on the reader.
They work like puzzles. Each sentence creates a little bit of suspense as you read it, wondering (unconsciously perhaps) how the author is going to tie this together. In the examples I’ve listed, the final independent clauses (in bold above) act like punchlines. In some ways, they are punchlines.
Good periodic sentences always punch the reader at the end.
The provide an aha moment. If you do puzzles, you are maybe just a little bit addicted to aha moments and epiphanies and “Eureka’s!” that give you an excuse to run through the street naked.
The aha moment that comes when you solve a puzzle is the same thing that patient readers get when they finish a good periodic sentence.
Like this one by John Donne from Meditation 17. He wonders if the person for whom the church bell rings can even hear it. “PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him.” Then he offers us this powerful periodic sentence, whose conclusion is so haunting it has made the meditation famous:
As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all.
Yikes. That’s the power of a good periodic sentence.
Of course, unecessarily complicated, self-indulgent sentences that follow every rabbit trail the author can think of, dropping in little quotes from obscure famous writers, or obscure famous politicians, or even more obscure (and arguably not at all famous) philosophers, little more than acts of bravado wherein authors point to themselves and practically shout, ”Hey, look at me! See how long I can write dependent clauses and phrases before I give the final simple, independent clause? Aren’t I great?” all the while forgetting that such a sentence needs a powerful and thought-provoking independent clause to make the effort worthwhile for the reader and often failing to provide such an important payoff, these bad periodic sentences just confuse your readers.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
I’d love to hear you all try your hands at a good periodic sentence—nothing too elaborate and wacky like that last one, mind you.
More resources on sentences:
20 comments ↓
If you want to run outside in your birthday suit because of an epiphany, make sure it’s not 40 below first.
Eve, good to hear from you. Sorry that I still haven’t responded to your comments from earlier in the week.
Great periodic sentence. Of course, in Texas where I live, it’s hot. (High of 77 F, 25 C today.)
I don’t mind-I have three kids, homeschool, keep house, and write, so I understand that things get done eventually:)
Thanks
Eve
Speechless.
Holy-moly! That was a doozie of an example sentence, Mark. Give yourself a gold star!
You know, Mark, the way you led us around, giving us practical examples, while staying on topic, and even making it funny, probably having to have to stop for air at least a couple of times because of its length, just goes to show you’re a master wordsmith.
L.L. Fragments come later, but they can be a really powerful syntax tool too.
Cormac McCarthy’s style is characterized by fragments of all kinds. He’s really a master at them.
Craver, aw shucks. Thanks for the kind words. And you win the prize for most complimentary independent clause.
(Also, L.L., that last comment was supposed to be a joke. Just read it as if I am adopting some sort of mock grandiose tone. It didn’t really come through in the text.)
Understood.
Really.
Immediately.
Without explanation.
No kidding.
L.L., you crack me up! I really want to spend some time posting comments on everyone’s blog, but I’ve gotta run out to Laity Lodge for a retreat. Fortunately, there’s no internet, no cell service, no phone, no TV, and no radio out there. Unfortunately, that means I’ll have to talk to all of you next week.
Alas, I cannot accept the prize, because it is a well established fact, everybody knows that the most complimentary independent clause was the young Chris Kringle as he courted his soon-to-be bride.
Wishing I could head to a place where there’s no internet, no cell service, no phone, no TV, and no radio, knowing that the brief silence might make up for a week that has been far too hectic, I envy you.
That wasn’t very good, but I tried. Craver really is the best at these. He deserves to win all kinds of prizes!
Hope the retreat is restful.
Having found your blog without asking or even trying, and after delighting in the grammatical grandiosity contained within while feeling the weight of how little I actually know about sentence structure, you should know this site is going on my blogroll immediately.
Ok I tried! It took me forever (perhaps I should count that as break time from work). It’s just not the natural tone in which I write. Let me know if I need to learn more about clauses before trying this again.
Have a great week, Marcus.
Charity… yes, this is a thing to want. It can be had very close to home, I suppose, with a little creativity. What do you think?
Try in the bath tub with your ears under water. I can’t hear my kids and hubby (wrestling and shrieking and laughing) like this:)
Craver, groooooaaaan. But I smiled.
Charity, you did great! And it was a really good retreat. I got to hang out with some really cool artists, musicians, and writers. I tried to keep a low profile, but I couldn’t resist asking them a few questions. It sounds like they are going to be part of the blog network that is starting soon. (We’re waiting on the Terms of Service from the lawyer–details, details, details.)
Julia, yea! So good to hear from you here. I’m really curious how you found me without trying, though. Thanks for all your help on the work stuff last week. I appreciate your advice.
L.L., I can unplug close to home, but it is so hard. Most of the time, I just don’t have the self-discipline for it. I try to limit the distractions around me as much as possible.
Eve, those all sound like things you should want to hear! It sounds like your house is full of joy–and that’s a very good thing.
Thanks everyone for the comments, and for being patient while I took my little time away. It was good.
Welcome back.
(Oh, sorry, is that a fragment again?)
>Eve, those all sound like things you should want to hear! It sounds like your house is full of joy–and that’s a very good thing
L.L., no need to apologize for fragments, though technically, I think “Welcome back” just has an implied subject and object:
[I] Welcome [you] back.
Something along the lines of the imperative mood that implies the subject “you.”
As in:
[You] Comment anytime, hon!
How do you keep all this straight in your brain? You must have a different filing system than me.
Imperative mood. Sounds like a clinical diagnosis of chronic bossiness.
Wierd, only half of my comment came out! What I was trying to say was that a mother’s ears can only take so much joyful sounds:)