A Dash of Style (2 page)

HOW TO
USE
IT

Some authors, like Camus, Carver, and Hemingway, used the period heavily. Although short sentences tend to be dismissed as amateur or juvenile, there are times when short sentences work well, when a work can even demand such a style. In some instances, to achieve a certain effect, it is more natural for a period to be used heavily. Here are a few:

• The beginning or ending of a chapter or book. A short sentence can be used to hook a reader and to add a heightened sense of drama. Consider the opening of Ray Bradbury's novel
Fahrenheit

451:

It was a pleasure to burn. Or of Patrick Quinlan's novel
Slow Burn:

Earlier that night a man's brains had been blown out. Or of Phyllis Moore's short story "The Things They Married":

First, she married herself.

Beginnings and endings allow room for dramatic license, and for breaks in style.

• Short sentences can deliver a "bang" that long sentences cannot. They also help emphasize a point that might get glossed over in a longer sentence, and help create contrast by breaking up a series of longer sentences. The short sentence in the following example achieves all three of these effects:

Charlotte knew the time had come to tell her boss how she really felt, to let him know that she wouldn't take it a second longer. She slammed open her door and marched down the hall, past the unbelieving faces of the secretaries, and right into her boss' office. She looked into his eyes, summoned all of her courage and took a deep breath.

She
couldn't speak.

Or consider this example from Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royal":

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive.

The final sentence in this example would not have the same impact if it were as long as the sentences that preceded it.

• Short sentences can work well in the midst of dialogue exchanges, helping to move the action at a fast clip. Consider this example from Raymond Carver's short story "Night School":

My marriage had just fallen apart. I couldn't find a job. I had another girl. But she wasn't in town. So I was at a bar having a glass of beer, and two women were sitting a few stools down, and one of them began to talk to me.

"You have a car?"

"I do, but it's not here," I said.

My wife had the car. I was staying at my parents' place. I used their car sometimes. But tonight I was walking.

Carver was master of the short sentence, and his talents are on display here. Notice how he also uses short sentences preceding and following the dialogue exchange. At first glance these four-word sentences might seem juvenile; but they achieve the desired effect, each hammering home a significant point, and doing so in rapid succession.

• Short sentences can be used to keep the pace moving at a fast clip in general. This might be necessary, for example, in an action sequence:

He turned the corner and sprinted down the alley. They were getting closer, fifty feet behind him. He kicked at the door. It wasn't giving. He put his shoulder to it. It gave with a groan and he stumbled inside. Stairs went up and down. He could hear them coming. He had to choose.

• On a more sophisticated level, short sentences can be used to complement the overall intention of the text. Consider this example from Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Lame Shall Enter First":

Sheppard kept his intense blue eyes fixed on him. The boy's future was written in his face. He would be a banker. No, worse. He would operate a small loan company.

The short sentences capture the feeling of Sheppard's thought process. Each stop represents another twist in his thoughts, his reaching another conclusion. We actually feel him thinking as he goes, each period hammering it home. The time it allows us between thoughts is crucial, since Sheppard's conclusions change with every thought: we need time to digest. Without the periods, the observations would blur, and we wouldn't feel the thought process. Because of them, we feel he's thinking long and hard about the boy.

Camus also uses short sentences to great effect in the opening of his work
The Stranger:

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow.

Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

The short sentences here serve many purposes. To begin with, these are the opening lines of the book and help to draw readers in quickly; they establish what will be the overall tone and style of the entire book; and on the more sophisticated level (which a master like Camus would have had in mind) they complement the overall meaning and intention of the text. The feeling evoked is clipped, matter-of-fact. Throughout
The Stranger
the narrator is also matter-of-fact about his mother's death, which turns out to be the crux of the story, and even the unnamed reason he is put to death. To further his intention, Camus immediately quotes a telegram, in which the short sentences mimic the short sentences of the narrator. (Keep in mind, though, that the above example is a translation from the French; quoting literature in translation —such as
The Stranger—
is inherently problematic, since numerous translators punctuate to their own fancy. That said, translators can only change a text so much, and Camus' intention remains.)

Hemingway was another master of the short sentence. Consider this example from his short story "Soldier's Home":

He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without any consequences. Because he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn't true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing.

With an author like Hemingway, the period is never used heavily for its own sake, but always because it serves a greater purpose. In

this case, each period hammers home a thought in the soldier's head, and does so in such a way to suggest his being deeply affected by the war, even shell-shocked. The repetition of the content ("consequences" used three times in the first three sentences) also helps to achieve this effect.

Rick Moody is a gifted modern author known for his bold experimentation with prose and style. His book
Purple America,
for instance, begins with a sentence that stretches for
pages
before reaching a period. Consider the below example from his novel
The Ice Storm
that, ironically, displays his abundant use of the period:

No answering machines. And no call waiting. No Caller I.D. No compact
disc
recorders or laser discs
or
holography or cable television or MTV. No multiplex cinemas or word processors or laser printers or modems. No virtual reality.

He could have chosen to separate these thoughts with merely a comma, or even a semicolon. By choosing to use periods, he allows each to sink in, more effectively cutting us off from the modern world.

THE DANGER OF OVERUSE

There is a major distinction between using periods heavily for a stylistic purpose (as explored above) and overusing them, which results in poor writing. Newspaper and magazine writers tend to slip into this style, since this is how they've been trained to write. In book form, though, overusing periods is displeasing, as it creates a feeling of choppiness.

With each new sentence, a reader prepares to ride a wave, to entertain a new thought and have it carried through to its proper end. Readers don't want the wave to crash before they've had a proper ride. If jerked in and out of new thoughts, they will feel jostled, and be less likely to dig in for the long haul. Beginning a new sentence is a microcosm of beginning a new book: it takes effort. The effort is minute, but it's there. With several hundred pages before them, readers do not want to have to stop and start every few words. They want to settle in.

For example:

He talked to the manager. She recommended a book. He looked

it through. He liked it. He bought it.

Such a series of short sentences feels childlike—particularly if the content is banal, as it is here. Most writers will not resort to such extremes, yet there are times in a work when writers can get tired and slip. They might get caught up in the plot, characters, scene, and in the excitement not realize they overuse periods. Upon editing, it is important to keep an eye open for this, for a cluster of short sentences doing stylistic damage.

The real threat is not a sentence being short, but being short of content. A short sentence, if handled well, can convey more than an entire page —likewise, a long sentence can convey nothing. One must be watchful for short sentences that, in context, convey little, are incomplete thoughts, and that are unsatisfying. Sentences mustn't lean too heavily on one another, at least not without a purpose.

Perhaps more significant (and subtle) is learning to identify when a long sentence is too short—when a period comes too quickly in a longer sentence, just because a sentence is long doesn't mean it's long enough. It can affect the reader only slightly, or even unconsciously. But the effect adds up. It is the crack in the windshield that starts to spread.

A short sentence can be satisfactory. But being satisfactory is not

your goal as a writer; your goal is to be a master of the form. To do so means to agonize over every sentence and to ask yourself, among other things, if it needs to be longer.
It could
need
to be
longer in its own right, such as:

She bought a dress.

She used her last dollar to buy the dress for her mother.

Or it could need to be longer as a result of combining it with what follows (or what came before). Such as:

She bought a dress. It was from her favorite store. She bought a dress from her favorite store.

Neither of these are necessarily "correct." Either example could work. It all depends on context, and on the effect you are trying to achieve. What's important is that, whatever route you decide to go, you do so as a result of deliberate choice.

"In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard."

— Russell Baker

HOW TO UNDERUSE IT

Just as authors have used the period to great effect, so have authors deliberately underused it (creating longer sentences) to great effect.

Sometimes a certain effect can only be evoked by a long sentence —

sometimes it is even necessary. A few possibilities:

• Long sentences—like short sentences —can work well at the beginning or ending of a chapter or book, for the same reasons outlined above: beginnings and endings allow poetic license, and a longer opening or ending can engage readers, allow them to settle in (or out). Like the opening and closing shots of a film (which are often much longer), readers are open for anything at those precious moments, and thus more willing to allow an unusual style. (We'll show an example of this later, from Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom!)

• A stream-of-consciousness effect (thoughts unraveling on the page in real time) can be achieved by using a longer sentence:

I woke up this morning and knew what I had to do but then the phone rang and it was Shirley and she was on to her favorite topic and before I knew it I was hungry and burnt the toast again and had to go out for breakfast which left me no time at all to turn to the paper.

As you can see, stream of consciousness is chaotic; it unravels uncensored and thus has a "real time" feel. Few devices help create this effect more than the absence of the period. But this style is also suffocating. Unless there's an excellent reason, it should only be used in special cases.

• Long sentences (like short sentences) can be used to help capture a viewpoint. For example, they could portray an obsessive character, one whose mind wanders and who thinks in a way that can only be conveyed by long sentences:

I counted 29 dollars, but my manager told me it was 28 and that I was a dollar short, a dollar short, but I counted 29 and I counted three times and I don't trust him and I don't think I was a dollar short, even though he said it was, I know because I counted, I counted three times.

This is highly stylistic, and can't be maintained for long without driving readers crazy. But the long sentence here captures a breathless, neurotic feeling that short sentences could not.

• If you find yourself having difficulty differentiating viewpoints and narration styles of two characters in your work, one solution is to simply shorten the sentences of one character and lengthen those of the other. The difference will be immediately apparent. This is a quick fix, and won't always be appropriate, but the principle is important, as it demonstrates the power inherent in the placement of a period. In his brilliant novel
The River Warren,
modern author Kent Meyers portrays multiple character viewpoints, changing his style radically (and his use of the period) each time he does. Here's an example from his character Pop Bottle Pete's viewpoint: