During a discussion at a cocktail party about communication prowess, a banker echoed: “Some of my college-educated colleagues don’t know Diddly.” As a business professional engaged in various industries, I’ve experienced the stupefied effects that incomplete and ill-formed sentences often evoke. Since most people realize spell check’s fallibility, you’d think they’d proofread more carefully, right? Wrong.
It’s not merely a matter of proofreading but first and foremost, one must be familiar with the art of sentence construction. NYT columnist Stanley Fish who penned, “How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One” dishes that most of us aren’t up to par when it comes to writing a sentence. Giving Fish’s new book more than a distracted glance might help cure this communication ill.
Here’s an excerpt from NPR:
“Fish is something of a sentence connoisseur, and he says writing a fine sentence is a delicate process — but it's a process that can be learned. He laments that many educators approach teaching the craft the wrong way — by relying on rules rather than examples.”Analyzing great sentences "will tell you more about ... what you can possibly hope to imitate than a set of sterile rules that seem often impossibly abstract," Fish tells NPR's Neal Conan.
A good sentence may be easy to pick out, but learning to understand what makes it great, says Fish, will help a student become a stronger writer and a "better reader of sentences."
“Just as a student of art must learn how to describe the merits of a painting, aspiring writers must be able to articulate what constitutes a well-crafted sentence.”
Read the article in its entirety here:
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