How to Write a Sentence. Author Joe Moran had quite a long-winded piece in The Guardian about writing, but this bit is worth saving:

A sentence is much more than its literal meaning. It is a living line of words where logic and lyric meet – a piece of both sense and sound, albeit the sound is only heard in the reader’s head. Rookie sentence-writers are often too busy worrying about the something they are trying to say and don’t worry enough about how that something looks and sounds. They look straight past the words into the meaning that they have strong-armed into them. They fasten on content and forget about form – forgetting that content and form are the same thing, that what a sentence says is the same as how it says it.

I’m all for excellent technical writing (see my style guide), but most of the writings I consider great have an almost lyrical quality to them.

Tuesday, 25 September 2018