As a part of speech, the conjunction is said to join elements of a sentence, but we should remember that join means here to bring into some kind of relationship, whether that is to connect (as in, birds and squirrels) or to separate (as in, not in the tree but on the grass). Connecting and …
Author Archives: rultimo
An Intricate Introduction
Here’s an example of an imaginative way to open a serious discussion. This is the first paragraph of the chapter entitled “The Age of Show Business” in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, an intelligent and thoughtful commentary on modern culture, published originally in 1985 and still in print—because it’s still relevant—today. A dedicated graduate …
Apposition
When I was in grade school, English class became the Language Arts. None of us really knew why, but many of our parents weren’t happy: just get on with teaching them the basics, they said, so they will know how to read and write. The change, though, may have harbored a defensible reason, and one …
The Cumulative Sentence
In an earlier post (Reading Closely), I made mention of what I think is a finely constructed sentence in Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea. Its design is called cumulative, and understanding its construction can help us build our own sentences more thoughtfully. Here is the sentence again: In the quiet of that place …
Revision Work: Correlatives
I asked a student recently to write about something he enjoys doing. He returned with a paragraph on cooking, and here (with his permission) are his final two sentences: Although cooking seems effortless, it is quite challenging. To achieve the right texture, not undercooked or overcooked, not only one needs to manage the timing precisely, …