The Geography

by Emily Brisse

cannot begin this essay without admitting that: I am an English teacher, and yet the one thing I loath perhaps even more than algebra is grammar. I start reading terms like adjectival complement and predicate nominative and nominative absolute, and my brain begins to settle into a dull sludge, and instead of slowing down, deconstructing these words, figuring out what they mean and what they can teach me about writing, my mind chooses to remember sitting in the back of my own ninth-grade English classroom, looking at my sweet teacher, and suddenly and passionately knowing that I hated her. As long as she continued to put up overheads of grammar exercises and draw lines on the board that looked like tippedover treesyes: I felt hate. What I actually hated, of course, was what she was turning language into subject, predicate, objectas if sentences were all logic, not the magical incantations I had until then believed them to be. Magical incantationsnow that sounds more interesting. Certainly more fun. In fact, its what I originally had in mind for this essay: why certain stories move us, why particular passages steal our breath away, why the right sentence orbits and leaves us grasping in an entirely new world. Isnt this why most of us started writing in the first place? To affect readers like this? To create such scenes?
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It was for me. So I went to the book Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. I remember reading it four years ago . . . . I felt language cast a spell over me and I knew I wanted that power. Rereading Love Medicine this past winter, the same thing happened, and every time it did, I took the cap off of my highlighter and colored over paragraphs, sentences, and phrase after phrase after phrase. Eventually I turned to my husband. Damn, I said. I think Im writing an essay on grammar. Lest you start to think the same thoughts I aimed at my ninth-grade teacher, let me clarify that by grammar, I mean syntax, and by syntax, I mean the ways writers manipulate chunks of language to achieve certain effects. So, magical incantations after all. Rereading Erdrich has helped me realize and appreciate that after the character, after the fully fleshed-out plot, after point of view and theme and setting and everything else that makes our stories come alive, there is the sentence. There is the one well-laced word. And these small geographical details of our writing are what take our words from drafts to shining, gracefully crafted landscapes. I wont diagram any sentences here, but I am going to talk syntax in regard to stylefocusing first on shape and then symboland its my hope that these pages leave you with a deeper appreciation for why the sentence is one of our most powerful tools.

of Sentences
Shape
oseph Williams, the author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, talks about the psychological geography of a sentence. This term resonates with me because even though he is talking about a grammatical formula that most Western readers expect and recognize introductory material plus subject-predicate-object plus the rest of the sentencejust that word geography is enough to help me frame this structure in images. He is saying that our readers come to our sentences expecting to find patterns, to first see the sandnounbefore they feel itverb hot between their toes. Ellen Bryant Voigt, the author of The For the sake of this metaphor, consider short sentences Art of Syntax, a text that analyzes the uses of as short roadssmall stretches of pavement syntax in poetry, insists that these or gravel that lead quickly to But, of patterns are deeply rooted, that intersections, dead ends, and course, our readers are not they form when, as babies, destinations. This is the we list to our parents and children, and its my guess that most of kind of sentence we all cargivers string together started with, the kind themand most of uswouldnt mind now vowels and consonants we pronounced proudly that become words then and again trading in a familiar landscape for from our kindergarten phrases then systematic, readersIt is cold! I something new and unexpected. predictably structured want spring! Its pretty clear sentences. Its no wonder that what those sentences mean, a garbled sentence feels ungainly and yet the short clause goes beyond and confusing to a reader. Reading it would simplicity. It can serve very sophisticated be something like a child navigating her way through a functions if we understand its potential. dense forest when shes only used to wide-open plains. Imagine yourself paused at an unexpected stop sign. But, of course, our readers are not children, and its my Those moments of heightened alertnessDo I go straight? guess that most of themand most of uswouldnt mind Do I turn What is this handwriting?are moments a writer now and again trading in a familiar landscape for something should take advantage of, and ca, by grasping the capabilities new and unexpected. Its the same way with the structure of of the short sentence. According to Virginia Tufte, author our sentences, and that is why studying their shape can be so of Artful Sentences, these quick clauses act as the perfect beneficial in the revision process. conduit for interruptions, transitions, restatements, conclusions, introductions of new speakers, andthe most Look again at the earlier extract from Love Medicine. If common purpose of short sentencesemphasis. By placing we take it apart in regard to the shape of Erdrichs sentences, such information inside of a small syntactic unit, you will we can see that, yes, most of them adhere to the subjectnot only make it hard to miss, but you will also make it plus-predicate pattern, but its clear memorable. It will have impact.
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that they are not all wide-open plains sentencesor dense forest or mountain range sentences, for that matter. Instead, there are varieties in the presented landscapes. The basic simple-sentence pattern exists: I grabbed Lipshas arm. But this lineAs if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across itcomplicates the familiar structure. And in Northern lights and Living lights were given fragments. Both of these two-word sentences are the shortest in the passage, and they contrast with the longest, which is compressed of twenty-two words. What does this math and labeling amount to? The reason why we all love a good road trip: the changing scenery keeps our eyes and minds interested.