Style debates

On various forums discussing badfic, I've constantly seen people moaning about long, run-on sentences. One would almost think it'd be a sure sign of badfic.

But.

I've just bought Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens in the user-friendly, cheap Penguin Popular Classics edition. Well, the font size isn't that user-friendly, and they don't sell the microscope with it, but at least it is cheap.

That book was one of my childhood favourites (in Hungarian translation), and I've been looking for it for at least three years by now, to read it in original. So I bought it with great joy and started reading.

And lo and behold! The book is full with very long sentences. Some of them occupy a quarter side. So, do we call Dickens a badfic writer now? [/sarcasm]

Soledad,
she of the long, run-on senteces

No we can't call Dickens a bad writer. Many great writers have used what would be called run on sentences. Where the problem develops is when the components of the sentence no longer carry a theme, and the punctuation is vague. That is a classic mistake in bad fanfiction. It's doubly embaressing when perpetrated by english speakers, where traditionally long sentences are not used in modern writing. For some reason grammar and punctuation education is woefully lacking in our school systems in the US.

On the other hand the impulse can be forgiven in those for whom english is a second or third language, as many of the sentence structures of foriegn languages have long sentence strings.

Bad fanfiction must be judged on its own merits, as you say what is one persons horrid nightmare is anothers grand epic.

Lasse-Lanta (whose spelling leaves much to be desired *g*)

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Someone should have told Abraham Lincoln he needed to work on his style. Just LOOK at the length of those first and third sentences! Didn't he know you're not supposed to use run-on sentences?

*end sarcasm*

Far too many fanfic "critics" confuse long sentences with run-on sentences. A long sentence which expresses a single thought is NOT a run-on! A true run-on sentence is one in which two or three unrelated (or only loosely-related) ideas are strung together one after the other.

Most very good writers regurarly use long sentences - as well as short, pithy ones. Using a variety of sentence lengths helps keep the reader's interest, because it keep the rhythm of the writing from falling into a dull, predictable pattern.

A sentence should be only as long as needed to express a single idea - no longer, and no shorter.

Lasse-lanta wrote:

Heh! You should see me when I'm writing in German!
Once I produced a sentece that was a whole paragraph long, with 15 lines or so. But in German, it's a rather common thing.

As for English, I think it also depends on the genre one's writing in. Very long sentences won't sound more natural in a fantasy fandom than in science fiction. And even within sci-fi, they'd be more characteristic for Vulcans (Trek) or Minbari (B5) than humans. Not in dialogue, but if they are describing something at some length.


BTW, Ithilwen, have you acidentally hit the Report button? Your comment got reported, and I can't think for a reason why it should have been.

This post has been edited by Soledad on Jan 14 2005, 11:58 PM

*nods* Came here to check it out. Seems it's an accident.

Sky

Yes, it must have been a wierd accident. I could swear I hit the Post button!

Computers work in mysterious ways... (at least when I use them).