Have you ever read a periodic sentence?
Of all the ways to arrange words, of all the methods of building a sentence, of all the ways craft prose, a periodic sentence may be the most elegant.
There. Now you have.
A periodic sentence is a sentence in which the main clause — the payoff, if you will — is delayed or suspended by a series of parallel clauses or other constructions that come before it. It’s a sentence that takes its time to unfold, often doing so in a pretty dramatic way at the end. Cicero, the Roman orator of the first century BC, is widely considered to be the most accomplished practician of this rhetorical device. I love the way these sentence pull readers along, teasing them with small pieces of the puzzle, getting them more and more engaged, until the meaning becomes clear at the end.
Of course, you could also be far more blunt and simply say:
A periodic sentence is elegant.
And why, you ask, should this matter to you? I’m sure many of my students had the same question when we discussed it in class yesterday. Well, it’s not because I think everyone should be familiar with Cicero and his periodic sentences. But rhythm is a profound element of such sentences, and I think we should all be aware of the rhythm of what we write.
Note that I said aware of the rhythm. Not rhythmic. In the same way, we should be aware of the tone of what we write. The vocabulary we use. The economy of our speech. And more.
The key word here is aware. Too often, we write in the same way we think — unwilling or unable to exert much control. And, if we are diligent, we’ll go back through and revise it some just to make sure we didn’t make any mistakes or that what we are trying to say is clear. That’s fine. But if you really want to be a better writer, there’s more you can do, and it starts with owning up to a particular responsibility.
Good writers understand that their primary purpose is often more than simply creating words. Their purpose is to create a feeling. They understand that it’s not simply the denotative value of their words that matters. The connotative value of what we write matters, too — sometimes even more than the words themselves. And these same writers understand that the creation of a particular connotative value is something to be carefully and consciously constructed.
Sometimes, your purpose may be best suited by short direct sentences. Sometimes it might be better to build complex, rhythmic sentences. Most of the time, you’re better off using a combination of these and other kinds of sentences. The same is true, as mentioned above, for vocabulary, tone, directness — you name it. Good writers begin with a desired end in mind, and control the many variables at their disposal with that end in mind.
That, as I tried to convince my students, is a pretty awesome responsibility, and being able to shoulder such a responsibility is what will set your work apart from the work of others who are less attentive.
Seriously. It will.
One Lucky Man 