![]() It has the look of something a twelve-year-old would do. To create a dramatic pause for emphasis, use a period instead of some other mark of punctuation (or, more rarely, no punctuation at all) before a sentence-terminating element. "Rules" for Making Effective Sentence FragmentsĮre are a few suggested rules for making effective sentence fragments:.(Nicholas Visser, Handbook for Writers of Essays & Theses, 2nd ed. Be alert to the possibility of sentence fragments, and eliminate any that are likely to strike readers as errors rather than as deliberate and effective rhetorical devices." The unintended fragment is another matter. When Winston Churchill recounted Hitler's boast that Britain was a chicken whose neck he would quickly wring, and then ended his account with the sentence fragment: 'Some chicken, some neck!' he demonstrated just how effective the deliberate use of an incomplete sentence can be. "Bear in mind that a sentence fragment is successful only when it is clear to the reader that it has been used deliberately. Deliberate and Unintended Sentence Fragments.Those pink rattlesnakes down in The Canyon, those diamondback monsters thick as a truck driver's wrist that lurk in shady places along the trail, those unpleasant solpugids and unnecessary Jerusalem crickets that scurry on dirty claws across your face at night. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes slowly evaporating under a scum of grease, full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes, and down at the bottom, inevitably, the pale cadaver of a ten-inch centipede. "Anyway-why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long.(Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes, 1926) A solitary old woman picking fruit in a darkening orchard, rubbing her rough fingertips over the smooth-skinned plums, a lean wiry old woman, standing with upstretched arms among her fruit trees as though she were a tree herself, growing out of the long grass, with arms stretched up like branches." Perhaps the greengrocer's mother lived in the country. She thought of the woman who had filled those jars and fastened on the bladders. "Laura looked at the bottled fruits, the sliced pears in syrup, the glistening red plums, the greengages.(Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. A boyfriend who lifts heavy things for a living. Not just a boyfriend, but a good man, too. "But she looked like she had a boyfriend.Water so hard it bends light, drills holes in rock and chokes up your radiator." (Edward Abbey, "Journey Home". Salt, selenium, arsenic, radon and radium in the water in the gravel in your bones. "The hawk sailing by at 200 feet, a squirming snake in its talons.Over the main entrance the words CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY." (Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World", 1932) "A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.Making the world seem ever smaller." (ad for Lufthansa) Connections to over 170 European destinations. "Departures from 22 North American gateways.Extraordinary the effect it has on a child.'" (Ian Fleming, "Moonraker", 1955) "Ogre's teeth." Being bullied at school and so on. Yes, I expect that's what the psychologists will say when they get you into the lunatic asylum. Comes from sucking your thumb when you're a child. Curiously enough,' he went on conversationally, 'it may have something to do with your teeth. Megalomaniac hatred and desire for revenge. He looked levelly at the great red face across the desk. White, "Hot Weather." "One Man's Meat", 1942) The cicada of the typewriter, telling the long steaming noons. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |