Strange Horizons Discussion Forum: The Length of the Sentence, by Matthew Cheney

Practically any well-written paragraph can be turned into a single sentence by using large numbers of conjunctions, like this piece does, because the paragraph, after all, is nothing but a series of short sentences about the same topic, and by using the comma and conjunction, those sentences can be combined, but the author has to be careful because, often, doing so requires the reader to sift through huge blocks of text, which ultimately makes the piece unreadable, or at the very least, painful to read, and that begs the question: what author wants to alienate his readers by creating mammoth sentences that just drag on and on; however, the semicolon can add a bit more white space without creating a new sentence, but it merely separates the two independent clauses, and if you really want to master the extremely long, winding, confusing sentence, you ought to get a handle on the semicolong, and to do so, you ought to consult John Milton who was a master at the extremely long sentence, and he would extend sentences on for pages even though his writing was predominately poetry about heaven, hell, and the plight of man, but I suppose that I've quite sufficiently proven my point: long sentences aren't quite so hard to write if you've developed your idea because the long sentence is nothing but the shorter sentences of a paragraph all strung together, and with that, I'll digress.

I realize this isn't close to the length of the column, but hopefully, I've made it clear that long sentences are merely a manipulation of grammar in order to make the author appear erudite.

All that being said, the column is very nicely done. :-)