of words a short sentence becomes medium, and when the division of medium becomes long.  Yet there must be some limits.  A sentence in Les Miserables includes nearly one thousand words in both French original and English translation.  John Milton produced some extraordinarily long sentences.  But these are in written discourse.  Some modern speakers have come dangerously near the limit.  In one printed speech one sentence has four hundred ten words in it; a later one goes to five hundred forty.  This second would fill about half a column of the usual newspaper.  Surely these are much too long.  A speaker can frequently make a long sentence acceptable by breaking it up into shorter elements by sensible pauses.  Yet the general direction must surely be:  avoid sentences which are too long.

Variety.  The paramount rule of sentence structure in speech-making is certainly:  secure variety.  Long, medium, short; declarative, exclamatory, interrogative; simple, loose, periodic; use them all as material permits and economy of time and attention prescribes.  With the marvelous variety possible in English sentence structure, no person with ideas and language at command need be a monotonous speaker.

EXERCISES

1.  Criticize this selection for its diction and sentence structure.  What excellences has it?  What can you find fault with?  Does its date explain it?

“The books in the library, the portraits, the table at which he wrote, the scientific culture of the land, the course of agricultural occupation, the coming-in of harvests, fruit of the seed his own hand had scattered, the animals and implements of husbandry, the trees planted by him in lines, in copses, in orchards by thousands, the seat under the noble elm on which he used to sit to feel the southwest wind at evening, or hear the breathings of the sea, or the not less audible music of the starry heavens, all seemed at first unchanged.  The sun of a bright day from which, however, something of the fervors of midsummer were wanting, fell temperately on them all, filled the air on all sides with the utterances of life, and gleamed on the long line of ocean.  Some of those whom on earth he loved best, still were there.  The great mind still seemed to preside; the great presence to be with you; you might expect to hear again the rich and playful tones of the voice of the old hospitality.  Yet a moment more, and all the scene took on the aspect of one great monument, inscribed with his name, and sacred to his memory.  And such it shall be in all the future of America!  The sensation of desolateness, and loneliness, and darkness, with which you see it now, will pass away; the sharp grief of love and friendship will become soothed; men will repair thither as they are wont to commemorate the great days of history; the same glance shall take in, and same emotions shall greet and bless, the Harbor of the Pilgrims and the Tomb of Webster.”

    RUFUS CHOATE:  A Discourse Commemorative of Daniel
    Webster, 1853