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Alegria
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:37 pm    Post subject: Sentence Structures Reply with quote

So at my school we have an astoundingly good English teacher (who may be insane), and from her I have learned more than I ever thought I would learn about one subject. One of the myriad subjects she has taught is Sentence Structures. By varying sentence structures, you make your writing (any writing, not just an SG), read more like poetry, which is excellent. I personally try to use these structures as often as possible. The structures follow:

Anadiplosis Repitition of the ending of a segment at the beginning of another segment:

-When I give, I give myself. --Walt Whitman

Anaphora Repetition of the beginnings of sentences or clauses:

- Let us march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on sgregated housing. Let us march on segregated schools. Let us march on poverty. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Antithesis Repitition by contrasting of parallel elements.

- That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. --Neil Armstrong

Asyndeton The omittance of conjuctions between words, phrases, or clauses:

- He was beaten, tortured, interrogated, manipulated.

Epanalepsis Repitition of the beginning at the end of a clause of sentence:

- Blood hath fought blood, and blows have answer'd blows. --Shakespeare's King John.

Epistrophe Repitition of endings in consecutive clauses or sentences

- I'll have my bond! Speak not against my bond! I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond! --Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice

Parallelism
Repitition of like structures

- I thought that had I not planned to have the party, or had I not gone to pick up my friend, or had I not run the red light, or had we not stopped to buy cigarettes, the incident never would have happened.

Parataxis A series of phrases or clauses without conjunction.

- I eat, I sleep, I read.

Polysendeton Using conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses

- A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head.

Climax Arranging phrases or clauses in order of increasing importance.

- Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and a chain, a pair of good luck pennies, and our lives. --Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird

Juxtaposition to place items side by side, creating emphasis by establishing contrast or comparison.

- He wanted above all... to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. -Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451

So there you have a quick list of some ways to communicate ideas and arrange sentences. Here's some other quick pointers:

- Long sentences make the paragraph seem longer and sluggish. This can be used to establish a mood when a character is waiting or tired. Also try to use longer words in those sentences.

- Short sentences make a paragraph seem rushed and frantic. Use these when you want to show a character hurrying or something that happens quickly.

- To create a paragraph of medium tempo, try mixing short sentences and long sentences together.

- The location you put imformation in a sentence matters! Ideas at the end of a sentence get the most attention, at the beginning they get a medium amount, and ideas in the middle of a sentence tend to get lost first. One can also call attention to a fact via punctuation. A dash (--) garners the most attention, a colon (Smile the second most. Conjunctions are more fluid and thus do not grab attention to a particular detail well. Be careful, however, not to overuse any of these.

- Finally, even though this is not concerned with sentence structures, look over your chapter and try to eliminate "empty" words that convey no real meaning. Such culprits include "very," "really," and other such words.

*****A warning!!!! No amount of style (which is the broad term for things such as sentence structure, diction, formatting, etc) can make up for an underdeveloped idea. Styles are details-- they do not make a bad SG good, but they do bring a good SG up a level.[/b]
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D-Lotus
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's a good list. I learned most of those, but not all. Maybe someone should start a thread about different kinds of metaphors, such as metonym, conceit... etc.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You misspelled repetition every time except once.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeed, that's interesting. But really not actually very useful in writing. I tend to dislike people saying putting this and that at the end of a sentence* has this and that effect.

General grammar rules I'm jiggy wid. However, style is what makes one writer different from another.

However, there's surely no harm in learning this.


*Or wherever
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Chinaren wrote:
Indeed, that's interesting. But really not actually very useful in writing. I tend to dislike people saying putting this and that at the end of a sentence* has this and that effect.

General grammar rules I'm jiggy wid. However, style is what makes one writer different from another.

However, there's surely no harm in learning this.
*Or wherever


How come? These rules are useful if you want to be an style and grammar expert and they aid in speaking about writing as well as being conscious of your own style. Besides, it's only like naming a gene and saying that it's responsible for blonde or brown hair. It's useful to know.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The point of this is not to introduce a uniform style. Just as there are rules to writing music or painting (these notes don't sound good together, these color clash, etc.) there are guidelines and rules to writing.

The reason it's important to know what sentence placements affect what is the same reason you have to be aware of what color does in painting. If you want to paint a calm, soothing scene, you should not paint it in red. If you want to create a short, choppy effect, you should not use long sentences. It's just how writing works.
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