How a sentence unfolds determines what effect it will have on its readers, and a good measure of the art of writing involves shaping and placing the three basic elements of word, phrase, and clause to compose a suitable order. The questions who is my audience? and why am I writing this? remain the two fundamental considerations we must be able to answer before and after composing our first draft in order to find that suitable order—before, in order to set off in the right direction and after, in order to ensure we are staying on the path to our conceptual destination.
We can use the two traditional terms loose and periodic to determine the shape of a sentence we have composed and decide whether or not to revise it. A loose sentence places the independent clause first, and lets the associated detail follow in its train. Someone under formal questioning, for example, may reply: I cannot answer that question because of ongoing litigation and advice of counsel. Here, the independent clause opens the statement, and a prepositional phrase follows (the two words because of constitute one compound preposition). A sentence of this shape conveys a straightforward frame of mind, one prepared to state boldly, without caution or qualification, the central assertion to be made: I cannot answer that question.
A periodic sentence, however, begins with the qualifying information, and the statement becomes more intricate because it delays the primary assertion by presenting the reasons first. The periodic arrangement of our example sentence would then produce this pattern: Because of ongoing litigation and advice of counsel, I cannot answer that question. The two structural units of the sentence are simply reversed; the prepositional phrase now initiates the statement, but the two objects of the preposition (ongoing litigation and advice of counsel), each of which names a cause for not answering the question posed, act as clarions announcing the impending arrival of the conclusion to be made by the independent clause. Shaped this way, a sentence appeals more to reason than to the confidence (or perhaps overconfidence) of the speaker.
A further technical term, abridgment, can be helpful in reshaping a sentence in revision. To abridge something is to shorten it by omission, and in grammar we refer to abridged clauses, meaning that a word or phrase of some sort, complete in its own right, is taking the place of a clause, which by definition would otherwise present a subject together with its finite verb. We could, therefore, regard the prepositional phrase in our example sentence, whether in the loose or periodic version, as an abridgment of these two clauses: because litigation is ongoing and because counsel so advises. The compaction of the original prepositional phrase has now been expanded into a full subject-predicate articulation, striking the notes of cause and reason even more dominantly: Because litigation is ongoing and because counsel so advises, I cannot answer that question. In most circumstances, this design would overshoot the mark and risk impertinence, but we have it in our kit nonetheless should the need for bold assertion bordering on defiance be necessary.
The scholar and historian Richard Weaver wrote an excellent textbook on writing entitled A Rhetoric and Composition Handbook (1974), and he says the following on the topic we have been discussing here:
One does not make either loose or periodic sentences an object of writing. Ordinary attention to the requirements of a subject will tell one when a thought is best presented in a loose structure and when in a periodic or suspended one. We discover, as a matter of practice, that the loose sentence tends to be more common and that the periodic sentence is better for those less frequent occasions when we wish to arouse the reader’s attention by suspension of meaning. When we are revising manuscript for the purpose of improving the general effectiveness of our style, however, it can be quite helpful to identify the two types. If the writing strikes us as dull and inert, it may be that we have adhered monotonously to the loose sentence…. But if, on the other hand, the writing appears artificial and overdone in its striving for effect, we may have fallen into a habit of writing periodic sentences.
Weaver’s first sentence is important to understand. He means that we should not sit down with the deliberate intention to write a loose construction here and a periodic one there. That would only produce what is aptly called a studied style, something thought out, self-conscious, and therefore awkward and unnatural. It is instead, he says, only with attention to the subject—and to the likely audience and intended purpose—that our written voice will fall into those forms most befitting its meaning. Never can we do this always at the first draft, and so these technicals of the art of composition are there for us to apply knowingly in revision, when on rereading we have recognized that a sentence or a passage could present itself more precisely and appealingly. And that, as Weaver says, is a matter of practice, not strategy.
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