A Self Made of Words: Crafting a Distinctive Persona in Nonfiction Writing

Sentence Structure

58 } Whatever you write about—whether it’s the drift of your thoughts, a childhood memory, or a surprising footrace—your persona is determined not only by your choice of words but also by the grammar and structure of your sentences. The basic element in any sentence is an independent clause—a group of words capable of making a complete assertion in and of itself. To make such an assertion, an independent clause must contain at least a subject, such as “she,” and a predicate, which is a word (or group of words) that makes a statement about the subject, such as “won.” That basic clause, “she won,” can stand alone as a complete sentence. Or it can be expanded in several ways: (1) by the addition of a word or phrase—“She won narrowly” or “she won, thanks to the last-­ minute stumble of her best friend”—yielding a “simple”sentence; (2) by the addition ofa dependent (or “subordinate”) clause, which refers to a clause that cannot stand on its own, because it’s preceded by a subordinating conjunction, as in “She won, when her best friend tripped and fell right before the finish line”—resulting in a “complex” sentence; (3) by the addition of another independent clause—“She won; her best friend stumbled and fell right before the finish line”—resulting in what’s known as a “compound”sentence; or (4) the short clause Sentence Structure { 59 might stand alone as a separate sentence, followed by a longer sentence—“She won. The only problem is that her victory came at the expense of her best friend, who stumbled and fell just before the finish line.” Though all but one of these variations conveys essentially the same information, the second and third are relatively understated compared to the first and fourth, which emphasize both the pyrrhic victory and the misfortune of the friend’s loss, suggestive of a somewhat ironic and judgmental persona. Other variations in sentence structure can be achieved by moving the main assertion from the initial part of the sentence to the middle or the end of the sentence, each of which produces a different effect, as you can see from the following examples: (1) “Just before the finish line, she came from behind to win, when her best friend stumbled and fell on the track”; (2) “Just before the finish line, where her best friend had fallen, she came from behind to win.” In each of these cases, both of which are complex sentences, the emphasis changes depending on what is revealed at the end of the sentence, which is the most dramatic part of these narrative statements. Variations in the length of your sentences can also create different impressions of your written self, as you can see by comparing the following passages, both in simple sentences: (1) “She won. She came from behind to do it. But her best friend stumbled right before the finish line”; (2) “She came from behind to win, her best friend having stumbled right before the finish line.” The three short sentences in the first passage convey the same information as the single sentence in the second passage, but compared to that one they tend to produce a choppy 60 } declarative style, somewhat evocative of a young person. By contrast, the single sentence evokes a more mature voice, not only because of its greater fluency but also because of using the absolute construction “her best friend having stumbled,” which is a more sophisticated type of phrasing than that of the first example. As illustrated by this section, variations in the grammar , design, phrasing, and length of your sentences can produce different impressions both of your self and of the information that you’re conveying. In order to get a first-­ hand experience of the differences, I’d like you to produce two versions of the first part of your memorable experience, one entirely in simple sentences of varying lengths, the other consisting of simple, compound, and complex sentences of whatever lengths you prefer. Then write a few sentences reflecting on the different effects of each version. Here is the opening paragraph of my vertigo piece entirely in simple sentences: It all started on a winter night, some five years ago, after getting into bed and resting my head on the pillow. The room began to move a bit to the right. Then the movement increased, spin by...