Professional Documents
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Sentence Structure:
The Short and the Long of It
By Elizabeth Oguss Some stories are so absorbing it seems they could tell themselves. If the facts of a story are gripping enough (or exciting, or moving, or funny enough, depending on the effect you're aiming for), you simply deal them out in the right order to keep readers spellbound. Is it that simple? Consider Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. Since it was first published in 1947, Anne's diary has moved and inspired readers everywhere. Here's the beginning of an account of Anne Frank's life: Anne Frank was born in 1929. Her parents were Otto and Edith. She had an older sister named Marmot. Margot was bom in 1926. The Franks lived in Frankfurt, Germany. They moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1933 to get away from the Nazis. In 1940, the Nazis Invaded the Netherlands. The family went into hiding in 1942. mind begins to wander. And with date after date sprinkled throughout that boring pudding of a paragraph, you're too busy figuring out Anne's age to pay attention to the story. Attention is what we writers crave. All of usnewspaper reporters, short story writers, novelists, students, even writers of owner's manualswant our readers to be hooked, driven irresistibly by the need to know "what happens next." First of all, let's do something about that group of dates in the paragraph about Anne's life. Although it's true that Anne was born in 1929, the action of the story begins when she's older. Why not focus on the story? Anne Frank was 4 when she and her sister, Margot, left Frankfurt in 1933. Margot was 7. Used sparingly, short sentences can be powerful, so we won't get rid of them all. We'll let Margot's age stand alone to accentuate how young the sisters were when they left their childhood home. Now let's vary the sentence structure to break up that flat rhythm. We'll use compound and complex sentences. Simply put, a compound sentence is one that has two or more clauses that could be sentences on their own
grammar slammer
but are joined by words such as or. but, or and. Complex sentences contain clauses that can stand alone (independent) and clauses that can't (dependent). Your grammar book explains the technicalities, but you'll know the difference just by reading. Here's our new paragraph; complex sent Anne Frank was 4 when she and her sister, Margot, left Frankfurt in 1933. Margot was 7. Like hundreds of thousands of Germany's Jews, Otto and Edith Frank hoped to escape the Nazis, and they fled with their daughters to Amsterdam. Otto found work, and the girls enrolled in school. In 1942, two years atter the , Nazis invaded the senter.ce Netherlands, Anne and her family went into hiding.
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A teenage girl who has to live in hiding? Anyone would want to know more. But as fascinating as it may be, no storywhether nonfiction or fictioncan tell itself effectively in a string of simple sentences. After two or three of those choppy subjectverb-predicate sentences, your
In your writing, you need more than a dull recitation of the facts like in the paragraph we started out with. By varying your sentences, you pull readers into an intriguing rhythm of your sentences and of an amazing story.
February 27, 2009 READ 25