In Praise of Long Sentences

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you want to be a better writer, then you must read an absolutely glorious essay by Joe Moran.

It’s called In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence.

And it’s such a beautiful treatment of the joy of long sentences, the ones that really work,

The ones that just carry you along to the end.

And it’s hard to pick out favorite passages, but I’m going to share a couple here.

He says, a long sentence should exult in its own expansiveness, lovingly extending its line of thought while being always clearly moving to its close.

It should create anticipation, not confusion, as it goes along.

And he makes all these great analogies with other art forms, including comedy and poetry and even tightrope walking.

Of comedians, he says, the secret of a great comedian is that he makes the audience feel simultaneously safe and slightly on edge.

He must quickly convey calm and control so that the audience members relax into their seats,

Safe in the knowledge that nothing truly awkward is about to happen.

But he must also create a sense of unpredictability that makes them lean forward.

A good long sentence has that same tension.

It should frustrate readers just a little and put them just faintly on edge

Without ever suggesting that it has lost control of being said.

Isn’t that great?

That’s wonderful.

He goes on to say,

A long sentence can seem thrillingly out of breath, deliciously tantalizing,

So long as we feel the writer is still in charge.

It is like listening to a great singer as he holds his breath and prolongs a phrase.

And he goes into the whole way that Frank Sinatra learned to sing and learned to carry tunes for a long time by watching the way trombone players did it.

Oh, wonderful.

I just can’t recommend this essay enough.

And the essay is?

The essay is In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence by Joe Moran, and I read it on lithub.com.

We’ll put a link to that on our website, waywordradio.org.

This show is about words and language and everything in between.