In Praise of Longer Sentences – Ed Simon QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Within a long sentence—clause upon clause, the commas and semicolons, em-dashes and colons, parentheticals and appositions piling up—there can be a veritable maze of imagery, a labyrinth of connotation, a factory of concepts; the baroque and purple sentence is simultaneously an archive of consciousness at its most caffeinated and a dream of new worlds from words alone. No doubt my proffered example of a long sentence, with which I began this paragraph, will not appeal to every reader, which is fine, but to those who hold as inviolate that the only good sentence is a short one, I’m happy to offer an interjection that’s simply two words, the first a scatological curse and the second a pronoun.
Ed Simon, author and editor
Picture credit:Andrys Stienstra
I have developed a writing exercise on this very subject. It’s one of my favourites and you can find it HERE
6 comments on “In Praise of Longer Sentences – Ed Simon QUOTES FOR WRITERS”
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BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
Ah! a fellow enthusiast for the prolixic burst of purple passages, held together by the mere – if one might use so feeble a word – cohesion of grammatical interjection of punctuation; the rich subtlety of a nested clause, be it ever so humble, to present an idea, hidden amidst the clamour of the rest of the multihued outpouring of words to illustrate a point!
generally speaking, my editor shouts at me if I go over 40 words.
Sixty three word comment…excellent!
thank you! I have learned a lot about how to retain a long sentence without losing my place, or failing to answer gerund clauses as openers. A long sentence followed by a couple of very short ones can be very impactful.
Imagining her future life as a countess, Emma danced around the bed, holding up her new gown to her, to have some idea how it would look, heedless of creases, but succumbing to her maid’s insistence that she permit poor Molly to get her mistress ready to meet the count; thus, Emma flowed down the stairs where the husband her father had arranged was waiting.
He was shorter than she was.
He also had spots.
Emma fled back to her bedchamber!
I apologise for my hesitancy. First I ‘liked.’ Then I ‘disliked.’ Then I ‘liked’ again.
I’m not normally so uncertain, in fact, I can be very certain of things I have no right to be certain about. Why, just the other day I was perusing the internet, as one does, and I came across a post, you know the thing; one of those small written articles or comments one calls a post, and I thought I could reasonably say I liked it when in fact, I couldn’t understand a word of its ambiguous illusionary drivel, but I am but human. One must try to encourage, don’t you agree?.
Love it. And my very favourite combination:- long AND short sentences. Your comment, Danny shows why length (and therefore texture) can be such a useful tool for writers.
You are so very kind, Bridget. It is always a pleasure to read your work.