I attracted some attention when I advised writers to “Fear not the long sentence” [see Tool 7]. In my book, I argued that while length could make a bad sentence worse, it could also make a good sentence better. What I got in response was more fear — from writers who had been conditioned to think that long was bad and from editors who had rubbed in the conditioner.
But time and again, I watch in admiration when my favorite writers go long. Take this recent New Yorker passage written by Nora Ephron about her life in an apartment building called the Apthorp, which also once housed her friend Rosie O’Donnell. She is describing George, the doorman:
Like most Apthorp doormen, George did not actually open the door — which was, incidentally, a huge, heavy iron gate that you often desperately needed help with — but he did provide a running commentary on everyone who lived in the building, and whenever I came home he filled me in on the whereabouts of my husband, my boys, my babysitter, my sister, my brother-in-law, and even Rosie, who painted her apartment orange, installed walls of shelves for her extensive collection of Happy Meal toys, feuded with her neighbors about her dogs, and fought with the landlords about the fact that her washing machine was somehow irrevocably hooked up to the bathtub drain. Then she moved out. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that anyone would leave the Apthorp voluntarily. I was never going to leave. They will take me out feet first, I said.The assignment, for all of you who graduated from Catholic schools, is to diagram Ephron’s first sentence. For you math geeks, it runs for 111 words. And notice what comes next: five short sentences that average six words apiece.
Notice how Ephron uses sentence length to match the content. That long sentence offers a rambling, disjointed inventory of the behaviors of the doorman and the comic. The short sentences describe abrupt actions, feelings or opinions.
There’s a tool: Use trippy long sentences (not Pippi Longstocking) to take readers on a tour. Use short ones to state a fact or utter a truth.
