Strong, Vigorous Sentences

I’ve been doing some reading in connection with a book I’m writing about Shaw. Last night I read an essay about Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion by Steven Cavell. (It’s included in a book called Cities of Words.) I didn’t like the essay and didn’t find much that would be useful for my book. But the essay did get me thinking about sentences – poorly written sentences and sentences that lack strength and vigor.

Today I’d like to pull a few sentences out of Cavell’s article and talk about what bothered me about them. (If you’re a Shaw enthusiast, be assured that I disagreed – sometimes vehemently – with the points Cavell is making. But my topic today is sentences, not Shaw.)

1. “But Professor Higgins will give Eliza Doolittle a little discourse defending the coldness of a way of life identifiable as one Shaw ratifies.”

“Identifiable as one Shaw ratifies” is…gobbledygook. Here’s what Cavell is apparently trying to say: For both Professor Higgins and Shaw, coldness is a way of life. (Not true of Shaw, by the way!)

2. “This writer, whose individual prefaces to his plays are as notable and interesting as the plays themselves that they preface, declares, in the opening sentence of his preface to Pygmalion, ‘As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place.'”

This sentence combines two unrelated pieces of information: 1) Shaw wrote good prefaces and 2) he wrote a sequel to Pygmalion. Weak writing! When you read good writing, you feel that you’re on a horse that knows where it’s going and wants to take you there. Here I feel that I’m just wandering around the scenery. 

(And why did Cavell call Shaw “this writer” instead of using his name? And what’s the difference between a “preface” and an “individual preface”? Nothing. That unnecessary “individual” is another sign that Cavell is a weak writer.)

3. My final example is such a mouthful that I’m not going to quote the whole thing. I want to point out something about the words in green:

“Shaw’s reading of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, as told in Ovid – where Pygmalion falls in love with his statue Galatea and asks the gods to bring her to life – in terms of a man’s training a woman in the further possession of language, brings the myth within range of the guiding demand for education….”

Here’s what jumped out at me: There are two clauses in a row. The first one is set off in dashes, and the second one is marked by a comma. That’s weak writing. There’s no connection between the clauses – no transitional word like because, so, but, therefore – to help readers figure out what’s going on. This long sentence (and I’ve left out a lot of it!) just drifts from place to place without a definite destination.

I have one more comment about Steven Cavell’s essay (and this will surprise you!). He writes like I do. Many of my sentences are just like his – wordy, weak, and purposeless. But here’s what’s different about my writing: I revise it.

Let me wrap this up with a few pointers I’ve picked up in my own writing career:

  • If  a sentence has more than three commas, I check to see if it’s too complicated. Often it is, and I revise it.
  • Breaking a sentence in two solves a surprising number of problems.
  • You’ll never impress anyone by writing “the fluid supply in my writing implement is exhausted” when what you mean is “my pen is out of ink.”
  • When writing is plain and simple, grateful readers think you’re a brilliant writer.
  • If something I’m writing doesn’t move forcefully across the page, I either revise it or throw it away.

Photo courtesy of Ben Deibert – Flickr

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