When I first started out, I read the “little book” by Strunk and White. I figured that it would give
me a quick intro to grammar. It was awesome. The examples were beautiful, and I had the
impression that two grouchy professors were telling me. “This is the way English is written, now
shut up and do it right.”
Their mantra was: “Keep it short, stupid.”
So, I wrote neat little sentences. Didn’t work. The editor said. “Your stuff is too choppy, fix it.”
So, I hooked the little sentences together with an “;”. Didn’t work. The editor said. “Gotcha, you
just hooked your little sentences together with some punctuation, I’m on to you, fix it.”
Then it got worse. The editor said. “Only Hemingway can get away with short sentences, and
you’re definitely not Hemingway.”
So, what does, “keep it short,” really mean?
Reedsy instructors said to analyze writing styles, and maybe you might learn something. The
trouble was that every time I did that, I got discouraged. Anyway, take a look at a this sentence.
It’s from Hamlet, and I think everybody agrees that Will Shakespeare knew what he was doing.
To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end
them.
Now that is one long sentence, and there’s a lot of commas, but between those commas, he
uses very few words, so but you know exactly what he means. I think of it as a roller coaster
ride through glorious prose.
So, what did that have to do with me? If I was not Hemingway, I most certainly was not
Shakespeare.
For me “keep it short” really means expressing thoughts clearly and concisely, without extra
words which muddle the meaning. Doesn’t matter how long the sentence, as long as the reader
can comprehend it.
OK.
I should still watch the long sentences, and not pull a Charles Dickens:
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,…
Everybody knows that one, but the sentence runs on for a whole page, and by the end it’s like,
“what happened?” C’mon Chuck, help us out with a couple of periods, and maybe even a
paragraph.
Some writers, Lawrence Durrell, for example, can get with florid prose: The Alexandria Quartet
is wonderfully dense, but it wouldn’t be the same without the ornate writing style.
In other words, I should be reasonable about the length. For me, that wasn’t a problem; I
couldn’t think of a long sentence to save my life.
So, I tried leaning back, aiming for the bleachers, and letting the words flow as they were meant
to do.
And, you know what, it was a lot of fun.
Any thoughts?
