T. Geronimo Johnson – The Sentence: Our Sentence (July 2021)

Francis Christensen believed that the writer makes a point by adding, not by taking away. Gertrude Stein insisted that the sentence is not emotional, but the paragraph is. Annie Dillard once told someone who asked her if he might become a writer, “I don’t know. Do you like sentences?” But what exactly is a sentence, and how is one born? Better yet, what is an effective sentence, and how is one built? Setting aside notional rules of grammar, this lecture explores strategies for fashioning compelling sentences.