The Sense and the Sound of Sentence

 

The Sense and the Sound of Sentence

 

I have been in awe of printed word, for as long as I can remember. Even in childhood I was never away from it for long. In my school years, I mostly read Hindi. I read magazines, comics, and abridged, translated versions of English classics. English books were a luxury we could not afford freely.

(Unlike today, books were expensive. Publishers like Penguin, Hachette, Harper Collins hadn’t come to India yet. Their books were imported and were exorbitantly priced. Only inexpensive foreign print media we saw were the Russian magazines like Sputnik and Russian novels of authors like Tolstoy and Gorky in translation. These were dirt-cheap. They were sleek. Magazines were printed on thick glossy papers with colourful pictures. I do not remember reading these. They made excellent covers for our school text books. Novels were bound elegantly in imitation leather with the title embossed in gold letters. Even a small town that we lived in then, boasted of cycle-rikshaws selling these in its bazar. Those were the golden years of India-Russia bonhomie, in a cold-war partitioned, bipartisan world. Russians were friends while West was viewed with suspicion.)

But I joined libraries that were accessible—and my parents encouraged me enthusiastically.

 

I remember, I was then about eight years. Schools had closed for summer vacation. My parents began to visit a new temple. Temple had a small collection— a few shelves actually—of mythology books. These were thin paperbacks, about hundred pages each and told religious stories in simple language, printed in large, bold letters. Week after week, I tagged behind my parents on their temple visit. I read books while they offered pooja. I borrowed a few, as much as I was permitted. If I finished these before the next scheduled visit, I trudged to the temple alone, four to five kilometres. By the end of the vacation I had read the complete collection.

 

My father was posted to Bangalore when I finished eighth level in school. In those days, more than forty years ago, each residential hamlet in Bangalore had a public library known as City Central Library. Library in our locality, was quartered in a four-bedroom house. Librarian sat in the small hall at the entrance with his chest of drawers which contained records of the borrowed books. Living room, the dining room, and the bedrooms had tall racks lining every wall, choc-a-block full of books. There was a reading table with a few chairs in the dining room, perhaps the dining table of the house. Books were everywhere. Smell of old books, it felt, had seeped into the walls of the house. Place radiated warmth of a home. It seemed to affirm that books were a part of daily life, not remote from the run-of-the-mill chores of living.

 

I took a membership and was introduced to a vast collection of English books for the first time. I came to know Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew stories. As with other class of books, I was a Johnny-come-lately in this genre too. I devoured these, two to three a day. My sister also had a membership and we could borrow two books on each card. In the following years, I read Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bronte Sisters, in original. Library also had a good collection of Hindi books, as it looked to me then. I read books by Shivani, Sharat Chandra, Bimal Kar, Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand, Amritlal Nagar, Acharya Chatursen, and many more authors, I hadn’t even heard before. When I remember my school years in Bangalore, they feel like halcyon days of reading. City Central Library is an ineluctable part of these memories.

 

 

I took note of a book’s language only after I started reading varied mix of authors. Gradually I learnt that the charm of a book lies also in its prose style. About fifteen years back, I veered towards non-fiction. Soon I was reading more history, science, biography, travel, and philosophy, than fiction. I found style of writing mattered more in non-fiction, where plot and the natural lure of a story aren’t there to bind reader’s attention. But I could not put my finger on the elements of good writing these books evidently had. I had learnt to appreciate these instinctively. I have now read a few books on writing. And have begun - much belatedly though - to understand the components of writing that attracted me then, and also the features that almost snubbed interest in a particular book, however novel the subject matter may have been. I find these books as much fun, as they are informing.

 

I read one such book sometime back. Though the book is on writing, it is not in the conventional mould of writing manuals. It gave me much joy as I read it. It also introduced me to certain novel aspects of the written word, I had no clue about. I want to talk about the book today.

 

 

First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing…and Life

Joe Moran

 

Joe Moran’s First You Write a Sentence is not a style manual. It does not emphasise few rules which author feels every writer should mind in their writing. It’s not prescriptive. It is Joe Moran’s reflections on the written word: What is the meaning of writing? How does a sentence covey to the reader, author’s thought when he is not around?

‘This is a book of sentences written in praise of writing sentences.’ Moran says in introduction.

Book is Joe Moran’s ode to the art of writing sentences, a paean sung in the praise of the beauty of sentences, his gratitude to nature for this gift.

‘First I write a sentence. I get a tickle of an idea for how the words might come together, like an angler feeling a tug, on the rod’s line. Then I sound the sentence in my head…Then I tweak, rejig, shave off a syllable, swap a word for a phrase or phrase for a word. Then I sit it next to other sentences to see how it behaves in company. And then I delete it all and start again.’

This is how he begins the book. Book is replete with such meaningful ruminations on writing, crafted in perfect sentences.

 

Sentence is the basic unit of all writing. One writes to convey a chain of thoughts to the reader. Sentence are the links in this chain. When a link is defective, chain breaks down. It is true that a piece of writing, a small essay of few hundred words or a book of many thousands, advances on its sentences. A writer is bound to write in sentences, as a reader is destined to read in them.

 

‘A sentence is more than its meaning. It is a line of words where logic and lyric meet—a piece of both sense and sound, even if that sound is heard only in the head.’ Moran writes in introduction. This theme, the sense and the sound of a sentence, runs through the book as Moran elucidates its various aspects. A sentence has a rhythm beyond its meaning. This rings in your ears, even when you have put the book down. A piece of prose cannot have all its sentences of this extraordinary beauty. But good writing has more of these. One remembers them for long.

This extract is from VS Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas, where Mr Biswas is lamenting the ignominy of dying without owning a house.

“How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it [A house]; …to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.”

Whenever I think of the book, these words popup in my mind. They seem to contain the gist of the novel.

 

Moran explains the many facets of a sentence clearly. He offers examples—his and of other writers—to illustrate his point. ‘The limit of a spoken sentence is the breath capacity of our lungs. The limit of a written one is the memory capacity of our brains…By the time it [full stop] arrives, you must still be able to recall the sentence’s beginning. If you can’t keep it all in your head, then maybe those words weren’t meant to be together.’ Here he is talking about writing short sentences. He discusses such features of sentence as never occurred to me before. His explanations are lucid and convincing. And it feels, after having read him, that you were always aware of these properties of the sentence: They seem so basic.

 

His prose has the beauty and elegance of poetry. You pause often to enjoy its composition. It is full of meaning and appropriate to the context he is discussing.

‘Rhythm is the song of life. The syllabic stress patterns of speech sync up with the heartbeat we hear in the womb, the pulses of air in the lungs, the strides of walking and running.’ He is discussing the need of rhythm in a sentence.

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Churchill’s wartime speech to his countrymen has the rhythm of marching soldiers.

 

Even when Moran talks about concepts of grammar like nouns and verbs, his views on their usage is not pedantic. His explanation is not confined only to their grammatical design. He reveals larger extent of their reach. He advises us to use less nouns in sentence and more verbs. Because in a nouny writing ‘no one says who did what to whom, or takes ownership or blame. Instead of saying X is not working (verb & participle) they say that there has been a loss of functionality (two nouns) in X. These words are not even trying to illuminate, they are immunizing themselves against the world.’

‘How do you breathe life into sentences choked with nouns?’ His advice is ‘Simple: use verbs.’ Because ‘Verbs enact this universal law: everything moves.’ Because ‘Life is movement. Each day we take 23,000 breaths and our heart beats 100,000 times.’ And because ‘Nouns and verbs are the two poles of the sentence. Nouns keep it still: verbs make it move.’

 

George Orwell advised novice writers to make their prose ‘plain’. ‘Good prose is like a windowpane,’ he wrote. Like a windowpane it offers a clear view of author’s thoughts. It is not noticeable in itself. This is considered a gospel of writing. In a chapter Moran criticises this aphorism with insightful arguments. In this long chapter, he offers many tips for making your prose meaningful and readable. His advice is in a gentle, conversational voice, not exhortations.

(Strunk and White’s iconic style-guide, The Elements of Style, Bible of composition in English, for a century now, is exhortative. It lays down immutable laws of writing. I do not offer this as a criticism. The Elements of Style packs in its anorexic slimness, a girth of mere hundred pages, wisdom of an epic.)

 

In another chapter Moran discusses the need and art of writing long sentences. ‘A long sentence can seem thrillingly out of breath, deliciously tantalizing, so long as we feel the writer is still in charge.’ He discusses many tricks of composing alluring, long sentences, all in his fascinating prose. ‘A long sentence should feel like it is pushing at its edges while still keeping its shape.’

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

This is the opening sentence of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities. It is long, very long, seems to end with every phrase, but then picks up again. Reader is left breathless but still pines for more. There is repetition of the words in each phrase, but instead of rankling the reader, it adds to a terrific rhythm.

Moran deliberates on ways to string sentences together in a passage. Sentences are not independent. ‘Sentence is a social animal; it feeds off its fellows to form higher units of sense.’ He mentions few tips to bring coherence in a piece of writing. He advises one not to use more words to link a sentence to its predecessor, words like however, moreover, namely, notwithstanding. Writer should not underestimate reader’s intelligence, he says. Reader sees a connection where one exists. Too many gummy words like these do not make prose clear but make it dull. He talks about the need for avoiding repetition of words in a piece of prose. He counsels judicious use of pronouns, hypernyms, and synonyms. But he cautions against resorting to the ploy of elegant variation to avoid repetition. (Guardian calls this technique ‘popular orange vegetables’ or ‘povs’, after one of its reporters used it to avoid repeating the word ‘carrot’). Elegant variation distracts and flusters the reader. Another trick-of-the-trade he offers is to vary the length of sentences. This gives a rhythm and cadence to prose. A passage in this section, listing virtues of short and long sentences is worth quoting here, to illustrate how Moran states his opinion lyrically and clearly.

‘Short and long sentences do different things…Short sentences give your brain a rest: long ones give it an aerobic workout. Short sentences imply that the world is cut and dried; long ones restore its ragged edges. Short sentences are declarative and sure; long ones are conditional and conjectural. Vary your sentence length and you mirror the way the mind works, veering between seductive certainty and hard-won nuance.’

 

 

Today, linguistics and cognitive psychology have revealed that language is an inexorable component of human brain. It is woven in brain’s fabric quite literally. There are specific areas and synapses in human brain involved with language formation. Basic structure of every language, including the sign language, follows a universal language of brain, i.e., Mentalese. Within a few months from the time they start speaking, children learn a staggering array of words. The ease with which toddlers learn to thread words into a meaningful sentence, betrays this inherent ability of our brain.

 

Our language, especially the usage of verbs, reflects the way our mind grasps the world. Speech, to state metaphorically, is the greatest gift nature has bestowed on our species. Only Homo Sapiens amongst millions of species of animals that ever lived on earth, possess this ability. But the reach of speech is limited in space and time. Writing is the medium that enables us to communicate our thoughts to a world far removed, even when we are not around.

 

We evolved to communicate through speech. Spoken word is thus, easiest to understand. Writing is a contrived communication, unlike speech that is natural. Good writing must emulate cadence of spoken words: its rhythm, its pauses, its flow, its music, its inflections, its tonal variations. This is a tall order. Joe Moran shows us a way of bridging the gap between speech and writing by his ingenious analysis of the art of writing a sentence.  And goads us, ever so gently, to breathe life into our lifeless sentences.

 

I read the book a few weeks back. As I write these words, refer to its pages again, I realise I will have to read it again and perhaps again. To learn about sentences, of course. But also, to learn that, which has held an irresistible lure all my life: the power, the beauty, and the glory of the written word.