Feel the Rhythm: Sentence Length and Repetition 

 
Few people know it, but language has rhythm and tempo in the same way that music does. In fact, you are
reading this sentence with a distinct rhythm and tempo in your mind right now!

To improve our understanding of rhythm and tempo, let’s dig into some of elements that contribute to it:

Element #1: Sentence Length

Good writers constantly vary their sentence lengths in interesting ways to give their writing a polished feel.
Please read the excerpt from a Barack Obama speech and label the sentences in terms of their lengths
from 1-5, with 1 being really short, 3 being medium length, and 5 being really long.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's 
about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their 
voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old. 
 
She was born just a generation past slavery, a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky. When 
someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. 
 
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America. The heartache and the hope. The 
struggle and the progress. The times we were told that we can't and the people who pressed on with that American 
creed: Yes we can. 
 
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak 
out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. 
 
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a 
New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can. 
 
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to 
greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can. 
 
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from 
Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can. 
 
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and 
imagination. 
 
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in 
America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. 
 
Yes we can. 
 
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask 
ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century, if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as 
Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

Element #2: Parallel Structure

Parallel Structure is where you repeat the same words, phrases, or sentence structure for dramatic effect.
Writers use its enjoyable rhythmic qualities to take good writing and make it great.

Here are some examples of what parallel structure looks like:

● If we are to survive, if we are to have even the hope of surviving, we must end this arms race.
● They went to London, to Paris, to Rome.
● It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness.
● Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Look at the following excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and highlight any
moments of parallel structure:

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are 
moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a 
cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 
‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at 
whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the 
vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent 
society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old 
daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling 
up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to 
form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward 
white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: ‘Daddy, why do white people treat 
colored people so mean?’; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the 
uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by 
nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’; when your first name becomes ‘n-----,’ your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however 
old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and your wife and mother are never given the respected title ‘Mrs.’; when you 
are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite 
knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a 
degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the 
cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can 
understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”