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First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life
'What a lovely thing this is: a book that delights in the sheer textural joy of good sentences ... Any writer should read it' Bee Wilson
'Thoughtful, engaging, and lively ... when you've read it, you realise you've changed your attitude to writing (and reading)' John Simpson, formerly Chief Editor of the OED and author of The Word Detective
The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A poet writes in sentences, but so does the unsung author who came up with Items trapped in doors cause delays. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time, and it is as close as most of us will get to making something truly beautiful.
Enter acclaimed author Professor Joe Moran. Using minimal technical terms, First You Write a Sentence is his unpedantic but authoritative explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace. Using sources ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare to George Orwell and Maggie Nelson, and scientific studies of what can best fire the reader's mind, he shows how we can all write in a way that is clear, compelling and alive.
Whether dealing with finding the ideal word, building a sentence or constructing a paragraph, First You Write a Sentence informs by light example: much richer than a style guide, it can be read not just for instruction but for pleasure and delight. And along the way it shows how good writing can help us notice the world, make ourselves known to others and live more meaningful lives. It's an elegant gem in praise of the English sentence.
'Moran is a past master at producing fine, accessible non-fiction' Helen Davies, Sunday Times
'Joe Moran has a genius for turning the prosaic poetic' Peter Hennessy
'Thoughtful, engaging, and lively ... when you've read it, you realise you've changed your attitude to writing (and reading)' John Simpson, formerly Chief Editor of the OED and author of The Word Detective
The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A poet writes in sentences, but so does the unsung author who came up with Items trapped in doors cause delays. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time, and it is as close as most of us will get to making something truly beautiful.
Enter acclaimed author Professor Joe Moran. Using minimal technical terms, First You Write a Sentence is his unpedantic but authoritative explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace. Using sources ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare to George Orwell and Maggie Nelson, and scientific studies of what can best fire the reader's mind, he shows how we can all write in a way that is clear, compelling and alive.
Whether dealing with finding the ideal word, building a sentence or constructing a paragraph, First You Write a Sentence informs by light example: much richer than a style guide, it can be read not just for instruction but for pleasure and delight. And along the way it shows how good writing can help us notice the world, make ourselves known to others and live more meaningful lives. It's an elegant gem in praise of the English sentence.
'Moran is a past master at producing fine, accessible non-fiction' Helen Davies, Sunday Times
'Joe Moran has a genius for turning the prosaic poetic' Peter Hennessy
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2018
533 people are currently reading
3948 people want to read
About the author
Joe Moran
24 books46 followersJoe Moran is Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and is the author of seven books, including Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and First You Write a Sentence. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.
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July 9, 2021About 96% twaddle.
Which is annoying because the 4% has some really good ideas and observations. But what this book needed, aside from a much more active editor, is a whole lot less rambling on about writing in the abstract and a whole lot more specific examples (which, hilariously, is one of his major recommendations to authors: be concrete). The parts that do this are great.
For the rest, it's just overstuffed with words. He advises that you shouldn't go on too long about twenty times. Mate. Chocker with baseless assertions such as 'sentences with lots of nouns are always bad' or that Chinese writing makes abstract concepts concrete because Chinese characters are actual pictures of the things the words mean. No, really. Jesus wept.
A particular highlight was the two paras stretching over maybe 35 lines with two extended metaphors and a long quotation, all to make the point that concision is good. Uh huh. There's also a completely gratuitous jab at romance and a spot of casual racism. So, no.
Granted I am an irritable reader at the moment but I haven't shouted at a book this much in a while. At least the 4% was good.
Which is annoying because the 4% has some really good ideas and observations. But what this book needed, aside from a much more active editor, is a whole lot less rambling on about writing in the abstract and a whole lot more specific examples (which, hilariously, is one of his major recommendations to authors: be concrete). The parts that do this are great.
For the rest, it's just overstuffed with words. He advises that you shouldn't go on too long about twenty times. Mate. Chocker with baseless assertions such as 'sentences with lots of nouns are always bad' or that Chinese writing makes abstract concepts concrete because Chinese characters are actual pictures of the things the words mean. No, really. Jesus wept.
A particular highlight was the two paras stretching over maybe 35 lines with two extended metaphors and a long quotation, all to make the point that concision is good. Uh huh. There's also a completely gratuitous jab at romance and a spot of casual racism. So, no.
Granted I am an irritable reader at the moment but I haven't shouted at a book this much in a while. At least the 4% was good.
April 19, 2020
My friend Nell wrote a review on this book and that made me want to read it. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I don’t think this is the book that people will assume it is. My mum asked me what I was reading and when I told her the title she said, ‘ah, and then write another’ – and I basically said yes, because this book is about that, sort of – except, it isn’t as well. This isn’t a book about thousand-mile journey of writing that starts with one single step – the impression I’d left my mum with. It is more a meditation on sentences and how they come to ‘mean’ and then how writers might write and rewrite sentences so that their meaning becomes clearer.
He starts by saying that a sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar apply – except, in the end he quotes Halliday who doesn’t believe that at all – and I don’t think the author does either. Of course, it depends on how you define ‘grammar’, but if it means something like ‘the rules of language that help writing mean things’, then texts that are longer than a sentence (a poem, a memo, a novel, a magazine article, a love letter) follow rules and mean things and they are often made up of multiple sentences.
While I’ve been reading this book, I’ve been editing a journal article that a committee of academics have written. I think there have been 7 authors, and god, you would know… A large part of what I’ve been doing while editing it is snapping sentences in half and then dragging (often kicking and screaming) the subject noun and the main verb to the front of the sentence. I’ve never liked periodic sentences – and this book gives me even more reasons to dislike them. They really are a blight upon academic writing. The author makes it clear that you can even get away with writing very long sentences if you keep the subject noun and the main verb close to the start of the sentence. If you were after advice on how to improve your sentences, this is as good as I can think of. People seems to believe that suspense is something incredibly ‘worthy’ in writing. That readers are reading your sentences so as to be titillated by not know what your sentence is about until the very end. So, even 20-30 words in there is no hint at all about who is doing what to whom. You may have been told the wonders of delayed gratification, but no such benefit apply to your sentences.
I really liked the idea that if you change the length of your sentences your readers will immediately think you are cleverer than you actually are. He says rhythm is key. It not only makes your writing chattier – it feels like you are in more control of your content and therefore cleverer. Foisting one ponderously long sentence after another upon your poor readers doesn’t make them think you know your stuff – even if it does convince them that they don’t understand what you are talking about, that doesn’t automatically mean they will think you do.
All that said, the advice in this book is nearly beside the point. The point of the book is less to do with the help it will give you in writing sentences. The point is to teach you to care while you write. So much of writing a good sentence is about caring for the reader. And this is where it gets complicated, as we often have little or no idea who that person might be. If you think about that for too long you might not be able to write at all – which isn’t really the point. The point is that a good sentence requires work, it requires effort – and the worst of it is that most of that work is left unseen. It also requires care – and most of that care will remain unacknowledged. It’s all terribly sad, but you should do the necessary work anyway.
I like to say that when I write the main point of my writing is for me to see what I think. But the author is better at explaining this than I am. We don’t write to see how clever we are, but rather to see clever we can be. If we write a clear sentence, that sentence is invariably smarter than we are.
He makes the point that writing is not the same as speech – but that said, its length and rhythms need to match the human voice. That is not simply because someone might have to read it aloud, but because the rhythms of writing aren’t incidental to the meaning of the sentence, but intimately linked to that meaning. It would be too easy to say that this guy is some breed of frustrated poet – but I do believe he is right in saying that music is grossly underestimated in how sentences go about making meaning out of smudges on a page.
I liked this book very much. I liked how he has chunked this into what start out seeming like asides (I’m terribly fond of asides) about the Vietnam war or a Russian with a head injury or retired nuns in France, and then how he links all this to something interesting about the use of nouns or the position of prepositional phrases or always having three examples. And I loved the advice that shifting a sentence from the end of a paragraph to the start of the next one can change the meaning and power of the sentence.
The real lesson is that writing isn’t about spilling your heart out on the page – that’s the easy part – the lesson is in mopping up enough of the blood so people get to see the wound.
Some of my favourite sentences from the book:
A sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar have dominion. 5
Rhythm is so basic to language that it does not need to be taught. You can correct a child’s syntax and pronunciation, but if they have no feel for the rhythms of speech, they will not sound human. 8
So I am no machine-wrecker. But part of me now wonders if technology does make things too easy, or perhaps makes them seem too easy. 24
The word sentence comes from the Latin sentire, ‘to feel’. 26
‘As I altered my syntax,’ W.B. Yates wrote, ‘I altered my intellect.’ 31
No writer should delay the reader for no reason. 42
Anything that slows the reader down must be a flourish, not a sleight of hand gone wrong. Showing off only works if it is shored up by invisible labour. A sentence covers most, not quite all, of its tracks. 43
Nouns should bring us closer to the world. 50
Philosopher Max Black wrote that metaphor does not so much compare something to something else as alter what both those things mean. 55
A metaphors potency comes from its being hard to refute 55
A nominalization implies that a process has stayed still long enough for us to name it. 56
Nominalizations pack a lot into single words. Science needs them so that it does not waste time gong over old news. 56
The nouniness of a piece of writing is a sure sign of lack of care for the reader and lack of thought in the writer. 61
In good writing, problems are lived, not solved – are held and weighed with words, not beaten with a stick until they are tamed. 64
A sentence should be a labour to write, not to read. 65
Check all the times you use is and was in your writing and see if they are just linking things weakly or actually saying something worth saying. 71
Cutting words is a silent, invisible gift to the reader – and a thankless task, inevitably, since no one but you knows you have done it. 101
If you cannot work out which part of speech a word is in a sentence – first, back, away, well, not, never abroad – it is probably an adverb. 105
We write alone, as an act of faith in the power of words to speak to others who are unknown and elsewhere. 115
Speech is more intimate in its syntax than writing. It has shorter clauses and more no-content words to link these clauses up. Writing is denser, with longer clauses and more content words. Speech is simple words in complex sentences; writing is complex words in simple sentences. 131
Songs are written in sentences, and phrasing is about singing in sentences, not song lines. 135
You cannot just rely on grammar when dispensing commas, for the tiny pause they hold within them is so much a matter of ear. 146
A sentence is a social animal; it feeds off its fellows to form higher units of sense. 161
One kind of prose still clings to the conjunctive adverb: academic writing, and the forms that mimic it, such as the school and student essay. 166
Both of these fears get in the way of the ideal of writing – as a gift from writer to reader, the gift of telling someone what you know or have seen. Conjunctive adverb blight occurs when you worry that this is not enough, and revert to the classroom mode of writing for teacher, explaining what you half-know to someone who knows it better. 167
The classic subject-predicate order starts with something known and adds something new, which the next sentence then starts with as something known. 175
But more often than you think, it is best just to repeat the noun. 179
If you keep pressing enter after every full stop, the music of your writing is easier to hear because now it can also be seen. 181
Skilled writers ignore this. They use pure topic sentences rarely and wrap-up sentences hardly ever. 184
I don’t think this is the book that people will assume it is. My mum asked me what I was reading and when I told her the title she said, ‘ah, and then write another’ – and I basically said yes, because this book is about that, sort of – except, it isn’t as well. This isn’t a book about thousand-mile journey of writing that starts with one single step – the impression I’d left my mum with. It is more a meditation on sentences and how they come to ‘mean’ and then how writers might write and rewrite sentences so that their meaning becomes clearer.
He starts by saying that a sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar apply – except, in the end he quotes Halliday who doesn’t believe that at all – and I don’t think the author does either. Of course, it depends on how you define ‘grammar’, but if it means something like ‘the rules of language that help writing mean things’, then texts that are longer than a sentence (a poem, a memo, a novel, a magazine article, a love letter) follow rules and mean things and they are often made up of multiple sentences.
While I’ve been reading this book, I’ve been editing a journal article that a committee of academics have written. I think there have been 7 authors, and god, you would know… A large part of what I’ve been doing while editing it is snapping sentences in half and then dragging (often kicking and screaming) the subject noun and the main verb to the front of the sentence. I’ve never liked periodic sentences – and this book gives me even more reasons to dislike them. They really are a blight upon academic writing. The author makes it clear that you can even get away with writing very long sentences if you keep the subject noun and the main verb close to the start of the sentence. If you were after advice on how to improve your sentences, this is as good as I can think of. People seems to believe that suspense is something incredibly ‘worthy’ in writing. That readers are reading your sentences so as to be titillated by not know what your sentence is about until the very end. So, even 20-30 words in there is no hint at all about who is doing what to whom. You may have been told the wonders of delayed gratification, but no such benefit apply to your sentences.
I really liked the idea that if you change the length of your sentences your readers will immediately think you are cleverer than you actually are. He says rhythm is key. It not only makes your writing chattier – it feels like you are in more control of your content and therefore cleverer. Foisting one ponderously long sentence after another upon your poor readers doesn’t make them think you know your stuff – even if it does convince them that they don’t understand what you are talking about, that doesn’t automatically mean they will think you do.
All that said, the advice in this book is nearly beside the point. The point of the book is less to do with the help it will give you in writing sentences. The point is to teach you to care while you write. So much of writing a good sentence is about caring for the reader. And this is where it gets complicated, as we often have little or no idea who that person might be. If you think about that for too long you might not be able to write at all – which isn’t really the point. The point is that a good sentence requires work, it requires effort – and the worst of it is that most of that work is left unseen. It also requires care – and most of that care will remain unacknowledged. It’s all terribly sad, but you should do the necessary work anyway.
I like to say that when I write the main point of my writing is for me to see what I think. But the author is better at explaining this than I am. We don’t write to see how clever we are, but rather to see clever we can be. If we write a clear sentence, that sentence is invariably smarter than we are.
He makes the point that writing is not the same as speech – but that said, its length and rhythms need to match the human voice. That is not simply because someone might have to read it aloud, but because the rhythms of writing aren’t incidental to the meaning of the sentence, but intimately linked to that meaning. It would be too easy to say that this guy is some breed of frustrated poet – but I do believe he is right in saying that music is grossly underestimated in how sentences go about making meaning out of smudges on a page.
I liked this book very much. I liked how he has chunked this into what start out seeming like asides (I’m terribly fond of asides) about the Vietnam war or a Russian with a head injury or retired nuns in France, and then how he links all this to something interesting about the use of nouns or the position of prepositional phrases or always having three examples. And I loved the advice that shifting a sentence from the end of a paragraph to the start of the next one can change the meaning and power of the sentence.
The real lesson is that writing isn’t about spilling your heart out on the page – that’s the easy part – the lesson is in mopping up enough of the blood so people get to see the wound.
Some of my favourite sentences from the book:
A sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar have dominion. 5
Rhythm is so basic to language that it does not need to be taught. You can correct a child’s syntax and pronunciation, but if they have no feel for the rhythms of speech, they will not sound human. 8
So I am no machine-wrecker. But part of me now wonders if technology does make things too easy, or perhaps makes them seem too easy. 24
The word sentence comes from the Latin sentire, ‘to feel’. 26
‘As I altered my syntax,’ W.B. Yates wrote, ‘I altered my intellect.’ 31
No writer should delay the reader for no reason. 42
Anything that slows the reader down must be a flourish, not a sleight of hand gone wrong. Showing off only works if it is shored up by invisible labour. A sentence covers most, not quite all, of its tracks. 43
Nouns should bring us closer to the world. 50
Philosopher Max Black wrote that metaphor does not so much compare something to something else as alter what both those things mean. 55
A metaphors potency comes from its being hard to refute 55
A nominalization implies that a process has stayed still long enough for us to name it. 56
Nominalizations pack a lot into single words. Science needs them so that it does not waste time gong over old news. 56
The nouniness of a piece of writing is a sure sign of lack of care for the reader and lack of thought in the writer. 61
In good writing, problems are lived, not solved – are held and weighed with words, not beaten with a stick until they are tamed. 64
A sentence should be a labour to write, not to read. 65
Check all the times you use is and was in your writing and see if they are just linking things weakly or actually saying something worth saying. 71
Cutting words is a silent, invisible gift to the reader – and a thankless task, inevitably, since no one but you knows you have done it. 101
If you cannot work out which part of speech a word is in a sentence – first, back, away, well, not, never abroad – it is probably an adverb. 105
We write alone, as an act of faith in the power of words to speak to others who are unknown and elsewhere. 115
Speech is more intimate in its syntax than writing. It has shorter clauses and more no-content words to link these clauses up. Writing is denser, with longer clauses and more content words. Speech is simple words in complex sentences; writing is complex words in simple sentences. 131
Songs are written in sentences, and phrasing is about singing in sentences, not song lines. 135
You cannot just rely on grammar when dispensing commas, for the tiny pause they hold within them is so much a matter of ear. 146
A sentence is a social animal; it feeds off its fellows to form higher units of sense. 161
One kind of prose still clings to the conjunctive adverb: academic writing, and the forms that mimic it, such as the school and student essay. 166
Both of these fears get in the way of the ideal of writing – as a gift from writer to reader, the gift of telling someone what you know or have seen. Conjunctive adverb blight occurs when you worry that this is not enough, and revert to the classroom mode of writing for teacher, explaining what you half-know to someone who knows it better. 167
The classic subject-predicate order starts with something known and adds something new, which the next sentence then starts with as something known. 175
But more often than you think, it is best just to repeat the noun. 179
If you keep pressing enter after every full stop, the music of your writing is easier to hear because now it can also be seen. 181
Skilled writers ignore this. They use pure topic sentences rarely and wrap-up sentences hardly ever. 184
January 3, 2022
Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.
First you write a sentence. Then you write another one. Then you add to it. And so a book is made.
Writing can be the most self-defining, life-affirming, and cathartic of processes. It can also be the most emotionally exhausting, mentally draining, and all-consuming.
Creative blocks, gaping plot holes, author envy, and the struggles of adequately forming the simplest of sentences in a cohesive manner are all part of the daily frustration. So, why write at all?
I guess the answer is different for everybody. For me, I write because the blank page feels like home. I write to untether my soul from its earthly bonds and see where it will take me. I write to be free. I write to know I can fly. They say writing is a lonely vocation but I've never felt that when I'm consumed in worlds more vivid than my own reality and creating characters that come from my own heart and so are kin to it.
So, first you write a sentence.
But writing is far more than its structure. It's what you put in alongside the words that matter. Joe Moran covers this and so much more in this release. He talks far less about the concrete ways to write a book and more on the abstract concepts about how they are structured. If you are looking for a hard guide to writing, this isn't it. If you are looking for an insight to the wonder of words and a passion for language, then look no further.
First you write a sentence. Then you write another one. Then you add to it. And so a book is made.
Writing can be the most self-defining, life-affirming, and cathartic of processes. It can also be the most emotionally exhausting, mentally draining, and all-consuming.
Creative blocks, gaping plot holes, author envy, and the struggles of adequately forming the simplest of sentences in a cohesive manner are all part of the daily frustration. So, why write at all?
I guess the answer is different for everybody. For me, I write because the blank page feels like home. I write to untether my soul from its earthly bonds and see where it will take me. I write to be free. I write to know I can fly. They say writing is a lonely vocation but I've never felt that when I'm consumed in worlds more vivid than my own reality and creating characters that come from my own heart and so are kin to it.
So, first you write a sentence.
But writing is far more than its structure. It's what you put in alongside the words that matter. Joe Moran covers this and so much more in this release. He talks far less about the concrete ways to write a book and more on the abstract concepts about how they are structured. If you are looking for a hard guide to writing, this isn't it. If you are looking for an insight to the wonder of words and a passion for language, then look no further.
April 5, 2020
I have dithered for a long time about the star-rating for this book. Did I love it? Was I merely obsessed with it?
If love, it needed five stars. If annoyed to the point of obsession, probably three or four.
As you can see, I’ve gone for five. I’ve read it two and a half times (the additional half was justified by making notes and copying out quotations) and I’ve been thinking about it almost incessantly for over a week. I don’t remember when a book last had this kind of effect on me.
Joe Moran’s central topic—sentences (and sub-text: style)—is close to my heart. For two reasons. First, I write poems and help other people with theirs. This makes me super-aware of word groups and how they are (or aren’t) well managed. Second, I regularly edit reviews of poetry. Almost all my editorial tweaks are adjustments to sentence structure. Mainly I simplify. I do know when a sentence doesn’t work. This book has helped me articulate what was previously just instinctive. I have learned from reading it, and I liked the author’s voice. So five stars.
But it is a weird book to read! It’s unnerving reading about sentences in sentences. Moran uses the word ‘sentence’ over and over and over again (as he says himself, more than 2000 times). After a while, the word becomes meaningless. You could substitute ‘egg-cup’ or ‘super-power’ and it would still be fine. Soon you find yourself accepting odd assertions without so much as raising an eyebrow.
‘A long sentence should be a beautiful, indelible gift.’ (‘Indelible’?)
‘Each sentence should burn brightly but briefly, lighting the way into the next one.’
‘A single sentence takes time to read, and must gradually solve itself in the space it takes up on the page.’
On my second reading, I turned to the opening chapter (definition of terms) with renewed interest. What is a sentence? ‘No one can agree’. The ‘safest definition is typographic. A sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop—except [ ...]’ That ‘except’ is followed by an excursus into why none of the definitions satisfy. Not even this humdinger: ‘A sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar have dominion.’
‘Rules of grammar’ may sound off-putting. Undeniably, there are many grammatical terms in this volume, and some of them were new to me (flat adverbs, copulative verbs, polyptoton, medio-passive tense). But he manages them entertainingly. He may be periodically carried away by his own enthusiasm (‘We live a lot in the passive voice, since reality is an authorless poem being written without our help’) but he takes the reader with him.
In chapter 6 (‘Foolish Like a Trout’) there’s a lengthy discussion of ‘voice’, which might be deemed off-piste, were it not that Moran’s own ‘voice’ is what got him the fifth star. ‘Voice’, he tells us, ‘is the elusive elixir of coherence’. What does that mean? I can only say that by this stage of the book you feel you understand. You have glimpsed the elusive elixir and drunk the style of paradise.
Neither on my first, nor second, reading did I get a clear mental picture of the book as a whole (though the ‘Twenty sentences on sentences’ at the end is a good summary). When I recommenced each day, I had no idea which chapter I was on, or where I was up to. I never felt the book had a story. This sounds like a snag. But it didn’t seem to spoil my pleasure. I kept underlining things. I kept enjoying his sentences. One, as he says, leads to the next.
Admittedly, I wasn’t always comfortable with the number of shoulds and musts. There is a lot of assertion going on.
‘A sentence should be a labour to write, not to read.’
‘A sentence should feel alive, but not stupidly hyperactive.’
‘A sentence should assume the reader’s existence but cannot keep demanding a response.’
When people tell me what should or must happen in writing, I feel immediately rebellious. But after a while, I began to experience the ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ as an expression of devotion. Joe Moran adores these little sentence-creatures. And they love him back: ‘A well-made sentence shows [ ... ] solicitude for others. It cares.’
So all in all I have only one persistent cavil. It’s the way Moran likes to invoke poets and poetry. He talks about what ‘poets know’ and what ‘poets love’ as though they were a superior species. Also he uses the word ‘poem’ too reverently. ‘Every writer is a poet by default and every sentence a little poem. The longer the sentence, the more closely it resembles poetry, or should do.’
If you think about this (though by and large you don’t think when reading this book; you’re swept along) it makes no sense. What he means is that well-written long sentences resemble the kind of poems he likes. And what he likes seems to be metrical: ‘Poets write in sentences, just like everybody else’ he says, ‘then play them off against the metre’.
Well, poets write in sentences most of the time, but by no means all. Once they used metre most of the time too. But that was before ‘free verse’ came in. Elsewhere Moran says—‘every sentence is really a song, the singing of a world into being’. Not always a poem, then. Sometimes a song.
So which trope shall we go for? Here, sentences are variously songs, poems, candles, gifts, railway tracks, social animals, puzzles, rivers, cinnamon rolls, and plain assertions. ‘Life is a noun but can only be lived as a verb.’ ‘Reading a sentence should never be a grim duty.’ ‘Forced to choose, [Joe Moran] would rather sound clear than be right.’
I predict that several sentences (!) of this book will become popular quotations. I am going to give a copy to at least two people to aid that process. And the author does, without a shadow of a doubt, sound clear.
If love, it needed five stars. If annoyed to the point of obsession, probably three or four.
As you can see, I’ve gone for five. I’ve read it two and a half times (the additional half was justified by making notes and copying out quotations) and I’ve been thinking about it almost incessantly for over a week. I don’t remember when a book last had this kind of effect on me.
Joe Moran’s central topic—sentences (and sub-text: style)—is close to my heart. For two reasons. First, I write poems and help other people with theirs. This makes me super-aware of word groups and how they are (or aren’t) well managed. Second, I regularly edit reviews of poetry. Almost all my editorial tweaks are adjustments to sentence structure. Mainly I simplify. I do know when a sentence doesn’t work. This book has helped me articulate what was previously just instinctive. I have learned from reading it, and I liked the author’s voice. So five stars.
But it is a weird book to read! It’s unnerving reading about sentences in sentences. Moran uses the word ‘sentence’ over and over and over again (as he says himself, more than 2000 times). After a while, the word becomes meaningless. You could substitute ‘egg-cup’ or ‘super-power’ and it would still be fine. Soon you find yourself accepting odd assertions without so much as raising an eyebrow.
‘A long sentence should be a beautiful, indelible gift.’ (‘Indelible’?)
‘Each sentence should burn brightly but briefly, lighting the way into the next one.’
‘A single sentence takes time to read, and must gradually solve itself in the space it takes up on the page.’
On my second reading, I turned to the opening chapter (definition of terms) with renewed interest. What is a sentence? ‘No one can agree’. The ‘safest definition is typographic. A sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop—except [ ...]’ That ‘except’ is followed by an excursus into why none of the definitions satisfy. Not even this humdinger: ‘A sentence is the largest domain over which the rules of grammar have dominion.’
‘Rules of grammar’ may sound off-putting. Undeniably, there are many grammatical terms in this volume, and some of them were new to me (flat adverbs, copulative verbs, polyptoton, medio-passive tense). But he manages them entertainingly. He may be periodically carried away by his own enthusiasm (‘We live a lot in the passive voice, since reality is an authorless poem being written without our help’) but he takes the reader with him.
In chapter 6 (‘Foolish Like a Trout’) there’s a lengthy discussion of ‘voice’, which might be deemed off-piste, were it not that Moran’s own ‘voice’ is what got him the fifth star. ‘Voice’, he tells us, ‘is the elusive elixir of coherence’. What does that mean? I can only say that by this stage of the book you feel you understand. You have glimpsed the elusive elixir and drunk the style of paradise.
Neither on my first, nor second, reading did I get a clear mental picture of the book as a whole (though the ‘Twenty sentences on sentences’ at the end is a good summary). When I recommenced each day, I had no idea which chapter I was on, or where I was up to. I never felt the book had a story. This sounds like a snag. But it didn’t seem to spoil my pleasure. I kept underlining things. I kept enjoying his sentences. One, as he says, leads to the next.
Admittedly, I wasn’t always comfortable with the number of shoulds and musts. There is a lot of assertion going on.
‘A sentence should be a labour to write, not to read.’
‘A sentence should feel alive, but not stupidly hyperactive.’
‘A sentence should assume the reader’s existence but cannot keep demanding a response.’
When people tell me what should or must happen in writing, I feel immediately rebellious. But after a while, I began to experience the ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ as an expression of devotion. Joe Moran adores these little sentence-creatures. And they love him back: ‘A well-made sentence shows [ ... ] solicitude for others. It cares.’
So all in all I have only one persistent cavil. It’s the way Moran likes to invoke poets and poetry. He talks about what ‘poets know’ and what ‘poets love’ as though they were a superior species. Also he uses the word ‘poem’ too reverently. ‘Every writer is a poet by default and every sentence a little poem. The longer the sentence, the more closely it resembles poetry, or should do.’
If you think about this (though by and large you don’t think when reading this book; you’re swept along) it makes no sense. What he means is that well-written long sentences resemble the kind of poems he likes. And what he likes seems to be metrical: ‘Poets write in sentences, just like everybody else’ he says, ‘then play them off against the metre’.
Well, poets write in sentences most of the time, but by no means all. Once they used metre most of the time too. But that was before ‘free verse’ came in. Elsewhere Moran says—‘every sentence is really a song, the singing of a world into being’. Not always a poem, then. Sometimes a song.
So which trope shall we go for? Here, sentences are variously songs, poems, candles, gifts, railway tracks, social animals, puzzles, rivers, cinnamon rolls, and plain assertions. ‘Life is a noun but can only be lived as a verb.’ ‘Reading a sentence should never be a grim duty.’ ‘Forced to choose, [Joe Moran] would rather sound clear than be right.’
I predict that several sentences (!) of this book will become popular quotations. I am going to give a copy to at least two people to aid that process. And the author does, without a shadow of a doubt, sound clear.
February 3, 2020
Certain books stop time. They are a drug, altering our perceptions and shifting our mind furniture.
Moran's First you write a sentence is smooth like caramel coffee. It teaches about writing through form and content. The magic of the sentence is his focus and passion.
I was wooed and wowed by this book. It is a reminder that writing is not 'about' communication. It is 'about' meaning, movement and occupying a passionate present.
Moran's First you write a sentence is smooth like caramel coffee. It teaches about writing through form and content. The magic of the sentence is his focus and passion.
I was wooed and wowed by this book. It is a reminder that writing is not 'about' communication. It is 'about' meaning, movement and occupying a passionate present.
November 29, 2018
The book is a mixture of advice, mostly good, and observation, which I found less interesting, probably because, as a writer, I am always looking for the former.
Advice is of course just that: it can be taken or ignored according to the context and circumstances. Useful advice includes:
• Focus on using verbs, rather than nouns
• Avoid the verb ‘to be’ where possible, as it is linked with the passive
• Avoid ‘-ivity’ words
• A list of specific words and terms to avoid (life experience, relationship, aspect, area, potential, structure, lifestyle)
• Adding adjectives/prepositions to the verb ‘is’ means wasted words
‘is applicable to’ – use ‘applies to’
‘is indicative of’ – use ‘indicates’
‘is able to’ – use ‘can’
• If you use nominalization, take care to avoid following with a weak verb or construction such as ‘to be’ (compare ‘Rutherford split the atom’ with ‘Rutherford’s splitting of the atom’
• Stick to transitive verbs with a direct object.
• Avoiding too many ‘-ing’ verbs. It may be unclear whether they are verbs or gerunds.
• Use past participles without ‘to be’. Instead of ‘the toast was burnt and ruined’ use ‘the toast burnt and breakfast ruined, we left the house.
• Use as many short words as possible, the older the better.
• Avoid ‘-tate’ and ‘shun’ words where possible.
• Cut the number of syllables used. Examples:
Unnecessary – substitute needless
Begin – start
Eyesight – sight
Individual – person
Sufficient – enough
Ascertain – learn
Structure – shape
Allow – let
The book includes some interesting comments on how language and sentence structure has changed over the centuries, and makes reference to Shakespeare’s use of strong verbs.
Advice is of course just that: it can be taken or ignored according to the context and circumstances. Useful advice includes:
• Focus on using verbs, rather than nouns
• Avoid the verb ‘to be’ where possible, as it is linked with the passive
• Avoid ‘-ivity’ words
• A list of specific words and terms to avoid (life experience, relationship, aspect, area, potential, structure, lifestyle)
• Adding adjectives/prepositions to the verb ‘is’ means wasted words
‘is applicable to’ – use ‘applies to’
‘is indicative of’ – use ‘indicates’
‘is able to’ – use ‘can’
• If you use nominalization, take care to avoid following with a weak verb or construction such as ‘to be’ (compare ‘Rutherford split the atom’ with ‘Rutherford’s splitting of the atom’
• Stick to transitive verbs with a direct object.
• Avoiding too many ‘-ing’ verbs. It may be unclear whether they are verbs or gerunds.
• Use past participles without ‘to be’. Instead of ‘the toast was burnt and ruined’ use ‘the toast burnt and breakfast ruined, we left the house.
• Use as many short words as possible, the older the better.
• Avoid ‘-tate’ and ‘shun’ words where possible.
• Cut the number of syllables used. Examples:
Unnecessary – substitute needless
Begin – start
Eyesight – sight
Individual – person
Sufficient – enough
Ascertain – learn
Structure – shape
Allow – let
The book includes some interesting comments on how language and sentence structure has changed over the centuries, and makes reference to Shakespeare’s use of strong verbs.
Read
April 13, 2019It's really hard to write a review for an unexpectedly brilliant book. I impulse bought this one while in a Writing section, but was a little weary - as I always am - about 'on writing' books that seem a little airy fairy.
I needn't have worried, Moran pens a brilliant piece that combines both practical advice, tidbits of history, and the proper airy fairy stuff that helps your own craft.
Initially I was going to pinpoint some brilliant chapters as stand-out, but they were all so good, I loved the section on full-stops and punctuation, but then I probably found the chapter on long sentences more useful. Ultimately First You Write a Sentence is a must read, and it's criminal that this piece doesn't seem to have too much traction online, although all the reviews present are saying the same thing!
I needn't have worried, Moran pens a brilliant piece that combines both practical advice, tidbits of history, and the proper airy fairy stuff that helps your own craft.
Initially I was going to pinpoint some brilliant chapters as stand-out, but they were all so good, I loved the section on full-stops and punctuation, but then I probably found the chapter on long sentences more useful. Ultimately First You Write a Sentence is a must read, and it's criminal that this piece doesn't seem to have too much traction online, although all the reviews present are saying the same thing!
September 14, 2020
I hate this book. There is so much interesting stuff here but it's buried beneath layers (and layers and layers) of verbal diarrhea.
Moran often makes good arguments and gives relevant examples. Like why you should not use too many nouns in one sentence and how (at his trial) Eichmann used nouny, passive language to distance himself from the horrors he was responsible for. But then he goes on and on making the same argument. Enough already with the redundant metaphors!
Both the style and the structure of the text meander. Could be fine, in defter hands. As it is, I got increasingly frustrated at having to wade through this morass of useless words to get to the good stuff. Moran is in love with the sound of his own voice and it kills the narrative (and my enjoyment of the good parts). An editor should have stepped in.
Moran often makes good arguments and gives relevant examples. Like why you should not use too many nouns in one sentence and how (at his trial) Eichmann used nouny, passive language to distance himself from the horrors he was responsible for. But then he goes on and on making the same argument. Enough already with the redundant metaphors!
Both the style and the structure of the text meander. Could be fine, in defter hands. As it is, I got increasingly frustrated at having to wade through this morass of useless words to get to the good stuff. Moran is in love with the sound of his own voice and it kills the narrative (and my enjoyment of the good parts). An editor should have stepped in.
January 27, 2020
First You Write a Sentence shed light on a subject I thought I understood, though I now see and feel my shortcomings. I was not a third through the book before I noticed the changes. How I paused before starting a sentence. Tweaked it a touch more than usual. This book affected my mindset, too—no longer was the sentence this cluster of words I had taken for granted, but a craft all its own. And it feels like I’ve only skimmed the surface. First You Write a Sentence makes me want to strive to improve my sentences and be a stronger writer. I won’t always succeed, but I can always try. 5/5
(Thanks, Seth, for pushing me to read this. Appreciate it.)
(Thanks, Seth, for pushing me to read this. Appreciate it.)
October 11, 2018
What a joy this Ode to the sentence was! I laughed out loud, many times. A wonderful elixir for the lover of language.
May 3, 2026
This is halfway between a style guide and a survey of well-turned phrases through the ages, and much better when it steers closer to the latter than the former. I like the guiding principle, which is to see the sentence (rather than words or grammar) as ‘the ur-unit, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right’.
Moran is at his best when picking out examples from writers who have produced great sentences, at which moments his book feels like a wonderfully informed kind of critical close-reading. On early Bible translations, for example:
At his worst, he has a tendency to descend into the kind of subjective prescriptivism that just annoys:
And so forth. It’s not clear what his authority is for making such statements (which is natural enough: such authority doesn’t exist). Fortunately, what you get from other parts of the book is closer to the truth – that good writing is about rhythm and ‘ear’. You can analyse the stylistic and grammatical features of this after the fact, but you can’t legislate for it in advance.
If you do, you get sentences that are clunky or, worse, blandly correct in the manner of ChatGPT writing a LinkedIn post. This book slightly predates the explosion of LLMs, and in the light of that explosion, some of Moran’s pronouncements (‘Writing has to be humanly messy, non-algorithmically flawed, to be truly readable’) have turned out to be more wishful thinking than fact.
Still, at least he does take care to examine the features of ‘current’ (as of 2018) sentence writing. He draws attention, for example, to the ‘great sentence shortening’ which has seen the average number of words in a sentence drop from forty-five words in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to somewhere in the low twenties today. JK Rowling averages twelve words per sentence; writing guides on the internet will tell you that fifteen-to-twenty words is ‘ideal’.
My feeling is that anyone telling you how few words to put in your sentences should be clubbed into submission with the nearest copy of Proust. But Moran’s conclusion is anyway more nuanced: he points out that the best prose often has a pleasing mixture of short and long sentences, which is indeed one of the best ways to keep a steady rhythm going.
Probably not unrelated to shorter sentences is the notion that ‘we live in an age that overprizes speech – that likes to pretend that writing is speech’. This obviously has something to do with the growth of less formal communications like emails and texts, but also offers a new angle on understanding the modern penchant for first-person fiction, which seems to offer the nervous writer an easy way to sidestep style altogether: just write like you talk! The fact that so many people who ‘read’ books are actually listening to them on audiobook also seems relevant.
All of this is of interest, and Moran’s examples are thoughtful and productive. All the same, you have to wade through a fair bit of verbiage sometimes to find the nuggets. ‘Most paragraphs are longer than they need to be,’ he points out while dispensing generalised writing advice, ‘likewise most chapters.’ If only he’d taken his own advice. A lot of his own writing seems to spend several paragraphs restating something that is perfectly clear after two sentences.
It is, of course, the perennial risk of anyone writing about style that their own style is likely to attract increased examination. Moran’s sentences don’t always come out of that especially well; but perhaps that’s just a sign that the rest of his lessons have hit home.
Moran is at his best when picking out examples from writers who have produced great sentences, at which moments his book feels like a wonderfully informed kind of critical close-reading. On early Bible translations, for example:
Tyndale is fond of a trick the Greeks called polyptoton, repeating a word but in a different form or part of speech. I have been a stranger in a strange land. Give us this day our daily bread. Judge not, that ye be not judged. Accidental repetition sounds clumsy and careless; intentional repetition sounds musical and meant.
At his worst, he has a tendency to descend into the kind of subjective prescriptivism that just annoys:
But can often be cut, because the substance of the sentence makes the qualification clear enough. But using but to start a sentence is, whatever anyone else says, fine. It is short, sure-sounding and often clearer than an about-turn however halfway in. Use however only when you want to stress the word or phrase that precedes it….
And so forth. It’s not clear what his authority is for making such statements (which is natural enough: such authority doesn’t exist). Fortunately, what you get from other parts of the book is closer to the truth – that good writing is about rhythm and ‘ear’. You can analyse the stylistic and grammatical features of this after the fact, but you can’t legislate for it in advance.
If you do, you get sentences that are clunky or, worse, blandly correct in the manner of ChatGPT writing a LinkedIn post. This book slightly predates the explosion of LLMs, and in the light of that explosion, some of Moran’s pronouncements (‘Writing has to be humanly messy, non-algorithmically flawed, to be truly readable’) have turned out to be more wishful thinking than fact.
Still, at least he does take care to examine the features of ‘current’ (as of 2018) sentence writing. He draws attention, for example, to the ‘great sentence shortening’ which has seen the average number of words in a sentence drop from forty-five words in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to somewhere in the low twenties today. JK Rowling averages twelve words per sentence; writing guides on the internet will tell you that fifteen-to-twenty words is ‘ideal’.
My feeling is that anyone telling you how few words to put in your sentences should be clubbed into submission with the nearest copy of Proust. But Moran’s conclusion is anyway more nuanced: he points out that the best prose often has a pleasing mixture of short and long sentences, which is indeed one of the best ways to keep a steady rhythm going.
Probably not unrelated to shorter sentences is the notion that ‘we live in an age that overprizes speech – that likes to pretend that writing is speech’. This obviously has something to do with the growth of less formal communications like emails and texts, but also offers a new angle on understanding the modern penchant for first-person fiction, which seems to offer the nervous writer an easy way to sidestep style altogether: just write like you talk! The fact that so many people who ‘read’ books are actually listening to them on audiobook also seems relevant.
All of this is of interest, and Moran’s examples are thoughtful and productive. All the same, you have to wade through a fair bit of verbiage sometimes to find the nuggets. ‘Most paragraphs are longer than they need to be,’ he points out while dispensing generalised writing advice, ‘likewise most chapters.’ If only he’d taken his own advice. A lot of his own writing seems to spend several paragraphs restating something that is perfectly clear after two sentences.
It is, of course, the perennial risk of anyone writing about style that their own style is likely to attract increased examination. Moran’s sentences don’t always come out of that especially well; but perhaps that’s just a sign that the rest of his lessons have hit home.
July 14, 2019
FIRST YOU WRITE A SENTENCE is a perfect example of how a topic you might find mundane can be delightful. A journey through the history, art, and science behind writing, this book reads like a love letter. Within its pages, author Joe Moran explains how words and their order can be combined to produce what seems like a dream. By including examples of all sorts of writing—like the Bible and Shakespeare—we learn how anyone can create engaging and meaningful prose.
Writing well is tough and Moran proves his skill in this unique book full of interesting examples. Rather than being a how-to guide, it’s part reference book—that you’ll actually want to read entirely—and part historical guide. It reminds me why I love to write and edit and illustrates how writing has evolved. It simplifies the daunting task of writing and is encouraging to those of us who aren’t sure if our writing is good enough. You’ll learn how vital it is to write clearly and how simple is best, contrary to what so many have been taught.
This is a book likely to be enjoyed by writers, readers, and anyone mesmerized by the craft. It’s also a good read for those who like subtle learning; this isn’t a boring how-to guide, rather a practical and intriguing gem. It teaches by example, and you’ll appreciate it for how well it does.
Writing well is tough and Moran proves his skill in this unique book full of interesting examples. Rather than being a how-to guide, it’s part reference book—that you’ll actually want to read entirely—and part historical guide. It reminds me why I love to write and edit and illustrates how writing has evolved. It simplifies the daunting task of writing and is encouraging to those of us who aren’t sure if our writing is good enough. You’ll learn how vital it is to write clearly and how simple is best, contrary to what so many have been taught.
This is a book likely to be enjoyed by writers, readers, and anyone mesmerized by the craft. It’s also a good read for those who like subtle learning; this isn’t a boring how-to guide, rather a practical and intriguing gem. It teaches by example, and you’ll appreciate it for how well it does.
May 20, 2020
A sentence, too, should not advertise the labour that went into its making.
To write well you need to read and audit your own words, and that is a much stranger and more unnatural act than any of us know.
To be able to write a sentence that someone else might read voluntarily and with pleasure is the work of a lifetime.
A sentence must be felt, and a feeling is not the final word, but something that grows, ripens and fades like anything else that is alive. A line of words should unfold in space and time, not reveal itself all at once, for the simple reason that it cannot be read all at once.
For writing is not just a way of communicating; it is a way of thinking. Nouny writing relieves the writer of the need to do either.
To write well you need to read and audit your own words, and that is a much stranger and more unnatural act than any of us know.
To be able to write a sentence that someone else might read voluntarily and with pleasure is the work of a lifetime.
A sentence must be felt, and a feeling is not the final word, but something that grows, ripens and fades like anything else that is alive. A line of words should unfold in space and time, not reveal itself all at once, for the simple reason that it cannot be read all at once.
For writing is not just a way of communicating; it is a way of thinking. Nouny writing relieves the writer of the need to do either.
December 8, 2019
Intelligent, but - irony of ironies - surprisingly slow-moving and demanding. I started off getting irritated by its tweeness, needing to double check that this had been written by someone with credentials (rather than some cocky journalist). I'm sure I've come across this sort of issue before, where you're reading a writing guide and thinking to yourself 'Well, that paragraph wasn't exactly dynamite. Are you sure you are quite the maestro you've set yourself up to be?'. There's something frankly cringeworthy about anyone - we'll all have met one - claiming a 'love of words' or a passion for the sentence. Like the way Nigel Slater gets a boner about a toasted crumpet or gushes about a digestive. You're like 'Ah shaddap'. It never quite loses that tone, alas.
Once reassured that he does knows his literature though, I eased into it more. There's plenty of meat there and some of the direction on how to think about structure (islands, short and long, word order, etc) are decent. I just wish there'd been a clearer sense of what each of those long chapters was intending to cover. It's almost as if it needed 25% less memoir for me and 25% more manual. I originally bought it thinking it'd be useful reading for the dim juniors I was working with at my last company - but they wouldn't have got beyond the title page. This is not a style guide. It's quite a bit heavier going. Well meant, but sluggish.
Once reassured that he does knows his literature though, I eased into it more. There's plenty of meat there and some of the direction on how to think about structure (islands, short and long, word order, etc) are decent. I just wish there'd been a clearer sense of what each of those long chapters was intending to cover. It's almost as if it needed 25% less memoir for me and 25% more manual. I originally bought it thinking it'd be useful reading for the dim juniors I was working with at my last company - but they wouldn't have got beyond the title page. This is not a style guide. It's quite a bit heavier going. Well meant, but sluggish.
July 7, 2019
This title nestled inside a review, along with another by Joe Moran. Even though I’m by now wary of books on writing, which like books on gardening, really take you away from the task itself, I was intrigued.
The epigraph, like most of Lewis Carroll’s writings, hides an element of insight:
For first you write a sentence,
and then you chop it small;
then mix the bits, and sort them out,
jist as they chance to fall
The order of the phrases makes
no difference at all.
It is a delightful book, which by its sheer eloquence, cannot but encourage good writing. Moran communicates his enthusiasm for the sentence, seeing it as a microcosm of life itself. It’s not so much the practical advice – and there’s plenty of it, with useful examples – but his turn of phrase, that map trains of thought both close to our experience and at the same time original. I revelled in my encounter with an interesting mind, a mind which delves into other realms, other writers’ and artists’ worlds , and with the whole cultural scene – for example, he describes a jazz piece in words, showing how a sentence can gain from the analogy.
He uses the other arts as a guide: the cumulative sentence, he says, is the prose equivalent of the long tracking shot in film.
Other writers provide useful quotes.
The secret of long sentences. Francis Christiansen said, was to set their heart beating at once by putting the subject and main verb at the start… the rest of the sentence can unfurl less hurriedly by
Or another fine one by Wayne Koestenbaum:
Pushing a sentence in the wrong direction without altering its sweet grammatical composure
He introduces us to little known people, as for example, the monk who wrote about rain.
Rain describes something real and is aso an abstraction, it can be an idea, an intimation a general state
The experience of the eccentric monk sitting in his hut listening to the sound of rain feels tangible::
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible , perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges , and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows.
Here are a few pointers to the good sentence - you can adopt them, use them from time to time, or ignore them totally.
a plain English sentence moves smoothly and easily towards its final point. The best way to ensure this happens is to put the important stuff at the end ….a sentence’ s strongest stress falls on its last stressed syllable.
.....
consecution: in storytelling, returning to and revising the previous sentence in escalating tautening patterns. Consecution moves forward by looking backwards, wheedling life and interest out of what was left unsaid in previous sentences. Letters and sounds from one sentence carry into the next , making the words come together at some barely noticed micro level.
Every part of speech seems to be a bit of a minefield. I sense that the point is to use them sparingly, wisely.. Take adjectives, the most treacherous of all, it seems.
.giving nothingness the qualities of being is a good summary of how not to use adjectives. Managerial blah is full of these hollow intensifiers, like "robust", "proactive" or "strategic".
As I see it, verbs escape scot-free.
we need the subjunctive lest we shoehorn life’s intricacies into a shoe that is too neat, small and painful….verbs are for painting life both as we are forced to live it and as it might be lived. Nouns find words for things in the world; verbs weave their own worlds out of words.
....
We need verbs not just to say what has happened but to pass through different levels of reality; verbs relate events but also rumours, surmises, dreams and desires. A friend once told me….”changing your mind is an occupational hazard of thought”.....verbs map the mutabiity not only of the world but also of our minds
The advice is not arid, not a mere set of points,– it is linked to life lessons, to literature, and to our very existence and breath.
parataxis is easier to read and strengthens the link between sentences.
Parataxis is both a style and a state of mind. In the Bible as in epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey the style is paratactic because everything in the world is seen as organically or magically connected, with all its mortals watched over by God, or by the gods
.....
We want a sentence to be clear but not too clear, odd but not offputtingly so, so that it can catch us offguard and remind us that we are alive.
To put it at its prosaic level - the advice is to vary, vary, vary. Oh, and never to say everything.
For me, the most important advice was the distinction between the High Fidelity writer and the Lister. Susan Kemper and David Snowdon compared essays some elderly nuns had written when they were young before taking their vows. They had been given the same writing briefs.
A high fidelity writer wrote: “Now aIl I am wandering about in Dove’s Lane waiting , yet only three more weeks, to follow in the footprints of my Spouse, bound to Him by the Holy Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.” A lister wrote: “I prefer teaching music to any other profession".
60 years on, the nun who had written the first sentence was mentally sharp. The second one had developed dementia. Whatever the reason - and it’s a chicken and egg situation over which we may have no control - the point is that a working memory is necessary to keep the parts of the sentence in place. You can take it as an encouragement to develop more interesting sentences – on the other hand, it may be somewhat depressing.
I wish every book had such a good index. Also useful as an aide memoire, is Twenty sentences on sentences at the end.
And like a metaphor of “the sentence”, the picture on the cover, of a roll of scrunched up paper, looks totally elegant and beautiful. Just like the book.
The epigraph, like most of Lewis Carroll’s writings, hides an element of insight:
For first you write a sentence,
and then you chop it small;
then mix the bits, and sort them out,
jist as they chance to fall
The order of the phrases makes
no difference at all.
It is a delightful book, which by its sheer eloquence, cannot but encourage good writing. Moran communicates his enthusiasm for the sentence, seeing it as a microcosm of life itself. It’s not so much the practical advice – and there’s plenty of it, with useful examples – but his turn of phrase, that map trains of thought both close to our experience and at the same time original. I revelled in my encounter with an interesting mind, a mind which delves into other realms, other writers’ and artists’ worlds , and with the whole cultural scene – for example, he describes a jazz piece in words, showing how a sentence can gain from the analogy.
He uses the other arts as a guide: the cumulative sentence, he says, is the prose equivalent of the long tracking shot in film.
Other writers provide useful quotes.
The secret of long sentences. Francis Christiansen said, was to set their heart beating at once by putting the subject and main verb at the start… the rest of the sentence can unfurl less hurriedly by
Or another fine one by Wayne Koestenbaum:
Pushing a sentence in the wrong direction without altering its sweet grammatical composure
He introduces us to little known people, as for example, the monk who wrote about rain.
Rain describes something real and is aso an abstraction, it can be an idea, an intimation a general state
The experience of the eccentric monk sitting in his hut listening to the sound of rain feels tangible::
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible , perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges , and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows.
Here are a few pointers to the good sentence - you can adopt them, use them from time to time, or ignore them totally.
a plain English sentence moves smoothly and easily towards its final point. The best way to ensure this happens is to put the important stuff at the end ….a sentence’ s strongest stress falls on its last stressed syllable.
.....
consecution: in storytelling, returning to and revising the previous sentence in escalating tautening patterns. Consecution moves forward by looking backwards, wheedling life and interest out of what was left unsaid in previous sentences. Letters and sounds from one sentence carry into the next , making the words come together at some barely noticed micro level.
Every part of speech seems to be a bit of a minefield. I sense that the point is to use them sparingly, wisely.. Take adjectives, the most treacherous of all, it seems.
.giving nothingness the qualities of being is a good summary of how not to use adjectives. Managerial blah is full of these hollow intensifiers, like "robust", "proactive" or "strategic".
As I see it, verbs escape scot-free.
we need the subjunctive lest we shoehorn life’s intricacies into a shoe that is too neat, small and painful….verbs are for painting life both as we are forced to live it and as it might be lived. Nouns find words for things in the world; verbs weave their own worlds out of words.
....
We need verbs not just to say what has happened but to pass through different levels of reality; verbs relate events but also rumours, surmises, dreams and desires. A friend once told me….”changing your mind is an occupational hazard of thought”.....verbs map the mutabiity not only of the world but also of our minds
The advice is not arid, not a mere set of points,– it is linked to life lessons, to literature, and to our very existence and breath.
parataxis is easier to read and strengthens the link between sentences.
Parataxis is both a style and a state of mind. In the Bible as in epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey the style is paratactic because everything in the world is seen as organically or magically connected, with all its mortals watched over by God, or by the gods
.....
We want a sentence to be clear but not too clear, odd but not offputtingly so, so that it can catch us offguard and remind us that we are alive.
To put it at its prosaic level - the advice is to vary, vary, vary. Oh, and never to say everything.
For me, the most important advice was the distinction between the High Fidelity writer and the Lister. Susan Kemper and David Snowdon compared essays some elderly nuns had written when they were young before taking their vows. They had been given the same writing briefs.
A high fidelity writer wrote: “Now aIl I am wandering about in Dove’s Lane waiting , yet only three more weeks, to follow in the footprints of my Spouse, bound to Him by the Holy Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.” A lister wrote: “I prefer teaching music to any other profession".
60 years on, the nun who had written the first sentence was mentally sharp. The second one had developed dementia. Whatever the reason - and it’s a chicken and egg situation over which we may have no control - the point is that a working memory is necessary to keep the parts of the sentence in place. You can take it as an encouragement to develop more interesting sentences – on the other hand, it may be somewhat depressing.
I wish every book had such a good index. Also useful as an aide memoire, is Twenty sentences on sentences at the end.
And like a metaphor of “the sentence”, the picture on the cover, of a roll of scrunched up paper, looks totally elegant and beautiful. Just like the book.
May 13, 2021
“The sentences are our writing commons, the shared ground where every writer walks.”
There is no easy way to review a book about writing, especially one as surprisingly brilliant as this.
Good writing is easy to read, and terribly difficult to write. Amateur writers (including yours truly) concern themselves too much with which words to choose or how to get the point across without coming in the way. And though these are noble pursuits, the resulting text doesn’t always have the same rhythm as they might expect. That is because sentences – not words – should be the focus.
The initial regurgitation of text is never the final product. The writer writes, then chips away at the block, adds a word here, shaves a syllable there, shuffles the sentences around to see how they behave in company. For syntax, or word order, when done right, doesn’t just set sentences on a higher plane. It is what makes them sing.
“First you write a sentence” is a book deeply aware of its contents and knows that the readers would expect no less than lucid, self-reflexive, near-perfect sentences that make it up. It is a high-wire act, this struggle with the written word, and the rules are learned to be broken, to create long-winded legato lines and say wondrous things with plain words.
I’ve read my fair share of ‘writing’ books. Most either chronicle the author’s unique approach to writing or are heavy with the technical elements which appeal to only those who’re already in the thick of things. But Moran does something spectacular. He combines the two with utmost fluidity and intrigue, and his love for sentences is truly contagious. He believes that the art of sentence crafting is not just for poets and authors. Even the unsung author who came up with “Store in a cool, dry place” knows much about it, and most of us know at least know how to appreciate a well-crafted email or text. And I concur.
Anyone reading this is bound to hear the music of sentences once out the other side, and appreciate the life that sentences can bring to a text. For sentences, like life, need work to live.
There is no easy way to review a book about writing, especially one as surprisingly brilliant as this.
Good writing is easy to read, and terribly difficult to write. Amateur writers (including yours truly) concern themselves too much with which words to choose or how to get the point across without coming in the way. And though these are noble pursuits, the resulting text doesn’t always have the same rhythm as they might expect. That is because sentences – not words – should be the focus.
The initial regurgitation of text is never the final product. The writer writes, then chips away at the block, adds a word here, shaves a syllable there, shuffles the sentences around to see how they behave in company. For syntax, or word order, when done right, doesn’t just set sentences on a higher plane. It is what makes them sing.
“First you write a sentence” is a book deeply aware of its contents and knows that the readers would expect no less than lucid, self-reflexive, near-perfect sentences that make it up. It is a high-wire act, this struggle with the written word, and the rules are learned to be broken, to create long-winded legato lines and say wondrous things with plain words.
I’ve read my fair share of ‘writing’ books. Most either chronicle the author’s unique approach to writing or are heavy with the technical elements which appeal to only those who’re already in the thick of things. But Moran does something spectacular. He combines the two with utmost fluidity and intrigue, and his love for sentences is truly contagious. He believes that the art of sentence crafting is not just for poets and authors. Even the unsung author who came up with “Store in a cool, dry place” knows much about it, and most of us know at least know how to appreciate a well-crafted email or text. And I concur.
Anyone reading this is bound to hear the music of sentences once out the other side, and appreciate the life that sentences can bring to a text. For sentences, like life, need work to live.
August 21, 2020
This book was a Christmas gift from my PhD supervisor, 'Not because you need it, but because you may enjoy reading it', and I have been slowly reading through it since the start of the year. It is such an excellent read, surprisingly enjoyable, given the topic. I have found it a constant source of inspiration while writing my dissertation this year. Moran muses on some of the fundamental beliefs about writing that have gained currency over the years, questioning some, defending others, and painting a picture of the nature and task of writing that is both compelling and practically helpful. I have made much more of a practice of going back and re-writing drafts for style and clarity since reading this, which I think has made a notable difference. I've also become more aware of some of my grammatical tendencies and how to improve them. I highly recommend this book to anyone who spends much of their time writing, and to those who wish they did.
July 3, 2020
2.5 really. Some good nuggets but got lost in the ether.
October 2, 2021
Really interesting little book which talks about the art of writing and creative writing in particular but with a focus particularly on sentences themselves. It's super strange but I never really thought of writing as a deconstruction into sentences and yet you see sentences absolutely everywhere and the power of that “full stop” at the end of a sentence is legion. Anyway here are some of the best bits from the book:
I can let the book fall open and tell just from reading a few sentences if I will like it. However compelling the subject of a book might be I find it hard to carry on reading if it sentences are boring.
“Attention” wrote the French thinker Simone weil is the purest form of generosity. Give your sentences that courtesy and they will repay you. I heard of a professor of art history at Harvard University who told her students to go to a gallery and stand in front of the same painting for three hours noting down their thoughts about it as they evolved. Her point was that three hours is a painful even absurd amount of time to look at a single painting. Most gallery goers glanced at an exhibit for a few seconds squint at the wall caption and walk away. It must break the hearts of any artists looking on. But the students had to dredge up unknown reserves of patience if they were not to expire of boredom. They had to stand in front of the painting as Rainer Maria rilke once wrote that he had learned to do with cezannes. They had to notice things they usually missed: that tiny wisp of cloud in the sky or a blurred face in a crowd, the shadow cast by an object the brushwork texture and stray drips of paint.
Whatever its underlying condition an onscreen sentence will scrub up as the finished article like a smelly man in his sharp suit.
The biologist Edward O Wilson coined the word biofilia: love of life. To describe the uniquely human trait of being drawn to everything that is vital and alive. We love a good sentence for biofileac reasons it breathes and moves like a living thing. It is word set in motion.
only bad poets think that rules cramp their style. The good ones know that rules are the road to invention and that cramped little corner with just enough legroom maybe the best spot to reconsider the universe.
The people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this you keep them alive. The artist Robert Montgomery wrote that sentence after a friend from art college was hit by a car and killed.
In his book the gift Lewis Hyde argues that the driving force of human civilization has been the giving of gifts. The gift economies of remote tribal societies worked by constant circulation. Potlatch as some societies call it. The seafaring people of the western Pacific made long perilous boat trips to other islands to exchange kula: bracelets and necklaces made of shells. They treasured these trinkets which had little intrinsic worth because the network of relations they symbolized as they moved round the ring of islands.
He slept on a straw mat with bare boards, ate a Spartan vegetarian diet and rose in the dead of each night to sing the night office. Each day he put in six hours hard labor digging up briars threshing the alfalfa or chopping trees for the furnace. He knew enough of hunger to sweetly anticipate and slowly enjoy eating a simple chunk of sourdough bread dipped in BlackBerry juice.
Robert McFarlane has called for a “rewilding” of the language and revival of old parochial words for nature as one way of shaking us out of our indoors virtual existence is. The right names well used can act as portals he writes. Good names open on to mystery, grow knowledge and someone wonder. when we don't know the names of living things we care about them less and retreat them a little from the real. nouns should bring us closer to the world.
The model Kate Moss once called for her motto replied “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. A dubious message to send about the body image perhaps but a well turned sentence surely which is why it is so well known.
Even the insanity of “napalm death” “nuclear war” or “genocide”. Inside such artificially sealed off language the maddest realities seem sensible.
He found that his fellow players would suggest changes by saying not “I think” or “let's do this or that” but “I would have thought” was the specific language they used. This gently probing language had a magical effect. It opened up an indeterminate mutual space in which strangers dwell with one another. This space was a lifesaver he came to feel in a world that throws strangers together in vast cities or hidden behind avatars online and ask them to be civil to each other. In these communities of token commitment where the social contract amounts to letting others exist we must forge a basic commonality. We do not need to like each other but we had best keep our less convivial impulses to ourselves. The social engine is oiled when people do not behave too emphatically.
One should notice the words no more sooner and someone looking through glass notices the glass. George Orwell in his essay “why I write” gave this idea it's epigram: good prose is like a windowpane.
Tyndale Has a trick to make his prose more speech like: he uses short words. The ancient Hebrew and Greek of the Bible have few long words. In fact words in old English were not always short because its inflections added syllables. But words that derive from old English shorn of these endings as they were in TynDales time are. Old English words like “ooze” and “spit” retain an onomatopoeia that perhaps all words once had.
Words like “book hoard” and “star craft” have a blunt lyricism not shared by their modern equivalents: library and astronomy. Old English kennings the compound nouns used as poetic synonyms: “whale road” for sea, “bone house” for body, “battle light” for sword are plain spoken poetry. The latter clearly where the word from Star Wars: “lightsaber” come from.
By shutting our lips and humming or closing the throat or using our tongues we make the semi blocked sounds called consonants. By opening our mouth we make the unblocked sounds called vowels.
Professional singers rehearsing a song will often just sing the vowel sounds because they know that is where the emotional power resides.
“Schwa” Is that little indistinct “uh” sound in unstressed syllables such as the a in above or sofa. Schwa Is the most common sound in English although you barely hear it because it doesn't shape the mouth.
The computer key we know best of all the “backspace” is our friend disguised as our enemy. Michelangelo said that David was hidden in the rough block of marble all along. The art of it was freeing the body from within by removing the superfluous stone. All that sculpture’s flawless detail the tensed neck at the bulging veins on their hands the twist of the torso and the curve of the hip so frugally conveying that a moment of repose is about to turn into action was made only by gouging out flaking off and chipping away the marble. Cutting words has this same creative quality. It seems to liberate a meaning that the writer was not aware of but that was waiting there to be found. Distilling prose like boiling down a source releases its real flavor and it's true essence.
Language for Barthes was like this. It collected cliches as navels collect lint. The same old words forced the mind through the same bold channels. And the repeat offender was the adjective. In his African grammar barthes explores the language used in French newspapers during the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s. The press defended the government's brutal suppression of the revolt by declaring that Algeria and France shared a common destiny and that the French still had a duty to rule over a less developed people. The newspapers used language that favored abstract nouns over verbs to suggest stability and permanence. But then out of a fear that those nouns were tired it paired them with reviving adjectives or adverbs. And so independence became “true” aspirations added “authentic” and destinies “indissolubly” linked. These extra words cleared the noun of its past disappointments presenting it in a new innocent credible state.
Studies have shown that young people tend to read a full stop in a text as clipped curt or passive aggressive. On social media they useful stops between every word to sound angrily emphatic. End. Of. Story. I sent this little clip too my cousin Bunty.
There is the belief that voice recognition will do away with keyboards. I'm using voice recognition right now :) writing is an arduous and energy consuming act: why bother with it when you could use something as easy and natural as a voice. In a 2002 Harper's essay Marshall Fisher claimed that typing will soon survive as just a sense memory. A writer he wrote while composing with his voice will still tap his fingers on the desk like an amputee scratching a wooden leg.
In April 1972 the film star George Sanders checked into a hotel room in a seaside town near Barcelona and took five bottles of an Nembutal. He left behind a note containing 4 pellucid sentences: Dear world I'm leaving because I'm bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I'm leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck. In under 30 words Sanders managed to sound like an authentic voice speaking to an audience. His full stops were as clean as bullet holes.
At 50 everyone has the face he deserves.
He advised writers to keep sentence is under 25 words. His golden mean was 17 words the average sentence length in Reader's Digest. To work out how forbidding a piece of writing is how soupy is its “fog” you add the average number of words in a sentence to the average number of words of three or more syllables and times it by 0.4. Writing with a “fog rating” of six can be navigated by child: writing with a rating of 16 needs a college graduate to get through it.
More likely long sentences are just overgrown graveyards where unconvincing arguments are conveniently buried.
Philip petite one August day 1974 secretly strung a wire cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked across it in the morning rush hour a quarter of a mile above a street in lower Manhattan. And yet petite made the comparison himself. On the steps of the courthouse after his arrest for this illegal act he shouted: “I'm not a daredevil I am a writer in the sky”.
Architects think of the building not so much as walls floors and ceilings but as the way that those enclose air and space. Actors and singers learned that a “pause” can carry as much meaning as the noise that breaks into it. The Japanese called this “ma” the spatial void or interval that underpins their idea of artistic beauty.
The word “paragraph” originally meant the paragraph break: it was the pause providing mark (Greek: graphos) in the margin beside (para) An unbroken block of text. The break is what matters and the start and the end of the paragraph are where it all happens.
Flaubert's mother accused him: your mania for sentences has dried up your heart.
I can let the book fall open and tell just from reading a few sentences if I will like it. However compelling the subject of a book might be I find it hard to carry on reading if it sentences are boring.
“Attention” wrote the French thinker Simone weil is the purest form of generosity. Give your sentences that courtesy and they will repay you. I heard of a professor of art history at Harvard University who told her students to go to a gallery and stand in front of the same painting for three hours noting down their thoughts about it as they evolved. Her point was that three hours is a painful even absurd amount of time to look at a single painting. Most gallery goers glanced at an exhibit for a few seconds squint at the wall caption and walk away. It must break the hearts of any artists looking on. But the students had to dredge up unknown reserves of patience if they were not to expire of boredom. They had to stand in front of the painting as Rainer Maria rilke once wrote that he had learned to do with cezannes. They had to notice things they usually missed: that tiny wisp of cloud in the sky or a blurred face in a crowd, the shadow cast by an object the brushwork texture and stray drips of paint.
Whatever its underlying condition an onscreen sentence will scrub up as the finished article like a smelly man in his sharp suit.
The biologist Edward O Wilson coined the word biofilia: love of life. To describe the uniquely human trait of being drawn to everything that is vital and alive. We love a good sentence for biofileac reasons it breathes and moves like a living thing. It is word set in motion.
only bad poets think that rules cramp their style. The good ones know that rules are the road to invention and that cramped little corner with just enough legroom maybe the best spot to reconsider the universe.
The people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this you keep them alive. The artist Robert Montgomery wrote that sentence after a friend from art college was hit by a car and killed.
In his book the gift Lewis Hyde argues that the driving force of human civilization has been the giving of gifts. The gift economies of remote tribal societies worked by constant circulation. Potlatch as some societies call it. The seafaring people of the western Pacific made long perilous boat trips to other islands to exchange kula: bracelets and necklaces made of shells. They treasured these trinkets which had little intrinsic worth because the network of relations they symbolized as they moved round the ring of islands.
He slept on a straw mat with bare boards, ate a Spartan vegetarian diet and rose in the dead of each night to sing the night office. Each day he put in six hours hard labor digging up briars threshing the alfalfa or chopping trees for the furnace. He knew enough of hunger to sweetly anticipate and slowly enjoy eating a simple chunk of sourdough bread dipped in BlackBerry juice.
Robert McFarlane has called for a “rewilding” of the language and revival of old parochial words for nature as one way of shaking us out of our indoors virtual existence is. The right names well used can act as portals he writes. Good names open on to mystery, grow knowledge and someone wonder. when we don't know the names of living things we care about them less and retreat them a little from the real. nouns should bring us closer to the world.
The model Kate Moss once called for her motto replied “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. A dubious message to send about the body image perhaps but a well turned sentence surely which is why it is so well known.
Even the insanity of “napalm death” “nuclear war” or “genocide”. Inside such artificially sealed off language the maddest realities seem sensible.
He found that his fellow players would suggest changes by saying not “I think” or “let's do this or that” but “I would have thought” was the specific language they used. This gently probing language had a magical effect. It opened up an indeterminate mutual space in which strangers dwell with one another. This space was a lifesaver he came to feel in a world that throws strangers together in vast cities or hidden behind avatars online and ask them to be civil to each other. In these communities of token commitment where the social contract amounts to letting others exist we must forge a basic commonality. We do not need to like each other but we had best keep our less convivial impulses to ourselves. The social engine is oiled when people do not behave too emphatically.
One should notice the words no more sooner and someone looking through glass notices the glass. George Orwell in his essay “why I write” gave this idea it's epigram: good prose is like a windowpane.
Tyndale Has a trick to make his prose more speech like: he uses short words. The ancient Hebrew and Greek of the Bible have few long words. In fact words in old English were not always short because its inflections added syllables. But words that derive from old English shorn of these endings as they were in TynDales time are. Old English words like “ooze” and “spit” retain an onomatopoeia that perhaps all words once had.
Words like “book hoard” and “star craft” have a blunt lyricism not shared by their modern equivalents: library and astronomy. Old English kennings the compound nouns used as poetic synonyms: “whale road” for sea, “bone house” for body, “battle light” for sword are plain spoken poetry. The latter clearly where the word from Star Wars: “lightsaber” come from.
By shutting our lips and humming or closing the throat or using our tongues we make the semi blocked sounds called consonants. By opening our mouth we make the unblocked sounds called vowels.
Professional singers rehearsing a song will often just sing the vowel sounds because they know that is where the emotional power resides.
“Schwa” Is that little indistinct “uh” sound in unstressed syllables such as the a in above or sofa. Schwa Is the most common sound in English although you barely hear it because it doesn't shape the mouth.
The computer key we know best of all the “backspace” is our friend disguised as our enemy. Michelangelo said that David was hidden in the rough block of marble all along. The art of it was freeing the body from within by removing the superfluous stone. All that sculpture’s flawless detail the tensed neck at the bulging veins on their hands the twist of the torso and the curve of the hip so frugally conveying that a moment of repose is about to turn into action was made only by gouging out flaking off and chipping away the marble. Cutting words has this same creative quality. It seems to liberate a meaning that the writer was not aware of but that was waiting there to be found. Distilling prose like boiling down a source releases its real flavor and it's true essence.
Language for Barthes was like this. It collected cliches as navels collect lint. The same old words forced the mind through the same bold channels. And the repeat offender was the adjective. In his African grammar barthes explores the language used in French newspapers during the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s. The press defended the government's brutal suppression of the revolt by declaring that Algeria and France shared a common destiny and that the French still had a duty to rule over a less developed people. The newspapers used language that favored abstract nouns over verbs to suggest stability and permanence. But then out of a fear that those nouns were tired it paired them with reviving adjectives or adverbs. And so independence became “true” aspirations added “authentic” and destinies “indissolubly” linked. These extra words cleared the noun of its past disappointments presenting it in a new innocent credible state.
Studies have shown that young people tend to read a full stop in a text as clipped curt or passive aggressive. On social media they useful stops between every word to sound angrily emphatic. End. Of. Story. I sent this little clip too my cousin Bunty.
There is the belief that voice recognition will do away with keyboards. I'm using voice recognition right now :) writing is an arduous and energy consuming act: why bother with it when you could use something as easy and natural as a voice. In a 2002 Harper's essay Marshall Fisher claimed that typing will soon survive as just a sense memory. A writer he wrote while composing with his voice will still tap his fingers on the desk like an amputee scratching a wooden leg.
In April 1972 the film star George Sanders checked into a hotel room in a seaside town near Barcelona and took five bottles of an Nembutal. He left behind a note containing 4 pellucid sentences: Dear world I'm leaving because I'm bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I'm leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck. In under 30 words Sanders managed to sound like an authentic voice speaking to an audience. His full stops were as clean as bullet holes.
At 50 everyone has the face he deserves.
He advised writers to keep sentence is under 25 words. His golden mean was 17 words the average sentence length in Reader's Digest. To work out how forbidding a piece of writing is how soupy is its “fog” you add the average number of words in a sentence to the average number of words of three or more syllables and times it by 0.4. Writing with a “fog rating” of six can be navigated by child: writing with a rating of 16 needs a college graduate to get through it.
More likely long sentences are just overgrown graveyards where unconvincing arguments are conveniently buried.
Philip petite one August day 1974 secretly strung a wire cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked across it in the morning rush hour a quarter of a mile above a street in lower Manhattan. And yet petite made the comparison himself. On the steps of the courthouse after his arrest for this illegal act he shouted: “I'm not a daredevil I am a writer in the sky”.
Architects think of the building not so much as walls floors and ceilings but as the way that those enclose air and space. Actors and singers learned that a “pause” can carry as much meaning as the noise that breaks into it. The Japanese called this “ma” the spatial void or interval that underpins their idea of artistic beauty.
The word “paragraph” originally meant the paragraph break: it was the pause providing mark (Greek: graphos) in the margin beside (para) An unbroken block of text. The break is what matters and the start and the end of the paragraph are where it all happens.
Flaubert's mother accused him: your mania for sentences has dried up your heart.
October 5, 2022
A very interesting book taking a long hard look at sentences. The book is about writing generally, but true to its title, it focuses the whole discussion around the importance of the sentence to writing. Packed with good advice, and the writing of this work itself demonstrates the author's competence on the subject. The subject is dealt with fluently and in an interesting manner. Essential reading for anyone who likes to write sentences and wants to think about how to do so.
October 4, 2024
The best book about writing, for my taste. No book I've read so far has explained the parts of speech in such an intuitive, poignant and narrative way, putting into words some ideas that I had never seen named or had only known by instinct.
November 10, 2023
2.5 stars.
At the end of this book, Joe Moran says his 'style guide by stealth' has turned into a 'love letter to the sentence', and I would agree. The book is not just a love letter to sentences, but also an homage to various people who have written, or indeed sung them, and as that it was entertaining, particularly the first half.
As a style guide it was hard to access, but I don't think it was written for me, as though the grammatical parts of sentences were named and explained, the explanation was not sufficient for me to follow, as it has been some time since I was required to parse a sentence. Had their been a glossary of those terms with some fuller description I may have understood more. Even though I was confounded by those parts of a book, I still noticed that the rules being expressed were at times contradictory: Don't use unnecessary words. Sometimes an additional word can expand the sense. Don't have sentences that go on too long [there are such sentences in this book]. Ensure your sentences are always clear [there were sentences I could not understand after several attempts]. Make your words fizz and sing - but little practical advice on how to make that happen. Examples given of sentences that fizz and sing to Moran, but not to me. It all goes to show how mysterious writing is. How there isn't a particular formula.
The book did make me want to write beautiful sentences. It also increased my fears that I am not equipped to do so.
At the end of this book, Joe Moran says his 'style guide by stealth' has turned into a 'love letter to the sentence', and I would agree. The book is not just a love letter to sentences, but also an homage to various people who have written, or indeed sung them, and as that it was entertaining, particularly the first half.
As a style guide it was hard to access, but I don't think it was written for me, as though the grammatical parts of sentences were named and explained, the explanation was not sufficient for me to follow, as it has been some time since I was required to parse a sentence. Had their been a glossary of those terms with some fuller description I may have understood more. Even though I was confounded by those parts of a book, I still noticed that the rules being expressed were at times contradictory: Don't use unnecessary words. Sometimes an additional word can expand the sense. Don't have sentences that go on too long [there are such sentences in this book]. Ensure your sentences are always clear [there were sentences I could not understand after several attempts]. Make your words fizz and sing - but little practical advice on how to make that happen. Examples given of sentences that fizz and sing to Moran, but not to me. It all goes to show how mysterious writing is. How there isn't a particular formula.
The book did make me want to write beautiful sentences. It also increased my fears that I am not equipped to do so.
March 29, 2020
I am really particular, or rather obsessive, when it comes to preserving books in their impeccable initial state. I hate to admit that my copy of this book is worn out. The pages are bursting with sticky notes and little colourful markers with cryptic comments on them. Almost every page has something underlined on it - a single word or in some cases, a whole paragraph. I had such a great time reading this book it's quite ironic that I'm not able to come up with one elegant, concise, satisfying sentence to describe it. So I'll just say this - even if you're not a writer and do not have any aspirations to become one, this book can be read for pure pleasure. In the curiously daunting sentence-writing game that all of us have to face in one form or another, Joe Moran leads by example.
August 25, 2022
How to-type books look easy with their bullet-points and clear dos and don'ts. But it's the kind of books like First You Write a Sentence that truly stay with you. The lists of rules disappear when you put down the how to-book, but writing advice in the form of wise prose stays for good. Not only is Moran's book a pleasure to read, the really important things stick without effort. I also like the fact that the focus is on the sentence. With that as the starting point, everything else is clearer, even if not covered here in much detail. Strongly recommended for any writer.
January 18, 2021
Definitely has a lot of valuable lessons for a writer, although I did feel like I knew half of them already (but perhaps that's more of a criticism of the recommendation). For a book who's main lesson (for the most part) is to have concise yet open writing, the writing felt compact and often wordy to me. But then again these are quite technical ideas. Not the most enjoyable but something I will definitely come back to.
August 29, 2019
First portion is fawning over sentences... I get it, its a book about sentences, I just didn't know there were that many anecdotes about sentences.
Second portion is more hammer-and-nail writing techniques, useful for anyone looking to write better in a formal style.
Second portion is more hammer-and-nail writing techniques, useful for anyone looking to write better in a formal style.
May 9, 2021
Such a great read. Gave me insights about the act of creating or consuming sentences. And life too. Best read of the year so far.
https://www.irwansyahrir.com/2021/05/...
https://www.irwansyahrir.com/2021/05/...
November 24, 2020
It's marvelous to write a perfect sentence, but for a book to be even decent, it needs to be more than perfect sentence after perfect sentence. I found this book profoundly exhausting.
April 23, 2022
”We write alone, as an act of faith in the power of words to speak to others who are unknown and elsewhere.”
A style guide that shows you what it wants to teach, or in fact, shows you instead of teaching. Moran draws on examples from a wide range of literary sources to show you how to write a good sentence and manages to convince you to read books you’re most likely not have had on your “want to read” list before. I’m now on a quest to find a Tyndale Bible and read his biography by David Teems titled Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice.
Writing is subjective so as it was expected, I don’t subscribe to everything he suggests. Yet, this is a book that I know I will keep on my desk and re-read every now and then for some writing advice.
A style guide that shows you what it wants to teach, or in fact, shows you instead of teaching. Moran draws on examples from a wide range of literary sources to show you how to write a good sentence and manages to convince you to read books you’re most likely not have had on your “want to read” list before. I’m now on a quest to find a Tyndale Bible and read his biography by David Teems titled Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice.
Writing is subjective so as it was expected, I don’t subscribe to everything he suggests. Yet, this is a book that I know I will keep on my desk and re-read every now and then for some writing advice.
February 8, 2020
What an astounding achievement! This book is a gift. And one that I’m certain will keep giving. I will be reading it again and again and again, many times, as a whole, or just a sentence or a block of passage from a random page, when I need inspiration, when I find myself, as I often do, staring at a blank page for more than an hour. That is a bad sentence. Is it not? Or is it? I’m opening the book again to find. Thank you very much Joe Moran.
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