Love Every Sentence

In my very first college writing class professor and mystery author William G. Tapply taught us along with so much else to "love every sentence."  This is one of those rare things that a professor said that has stuck with me and I think always will.  I think of that phrase every time I sit down to write and try my best to stay true to it.


Professor Tapply died of Leukemia in 2009, but he would have been excited about Stanley Fish's newest book.  In How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, Fish discusses in detail the art of writing sentences along with the great sentences in literature and why and how language can be so effective.



Shout out to Sue for sharing a great article from Slate in which Fish shares his top five list of the best sentences ever written (click here for a direct link to the article).  My favorite of the bunch is Fish's fourth sentence:

Ford Madox Ford (from The Good Soldier 1915):  "And I shall go on talking in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars."

I'm always impressed when a single sentence places you in a moment in a way some entire paragraphs can't.  Another one of my all-time favorites is from John Keene's Annotations:  "In the summer the heat would troll across the city like an immense Seine, gathering every living and inanimate thing in it's folds."  This sentence is one of many written in a journal that I keep just for the purpose of recording things worth remembering. 

I truly believe that while good writing is not all about beauty, a beautifully and effectively written sentence can work wonders in any form of writing.  I also believe that reading is as effective in learning to write well as writing is, so I am excited about Fish's use of both instruction and example.  I am greatly looking forward to reading and sharing more of Stanley Fish's great sentences.