Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read [Paperback]

Based on the bestselling series from The Great Courses,Building Great Sentencescelebrates the sheer joy of language—and will forever change the way you read and write.

Great writing begins with the sentence. Whether it’s two words (“Jesus wept.”) or William Faulkner’s 1,287-word sentence inAbsalom! Absalom!, sentences have the power to captivate, entertain, motivate, educate, and, most importantly, delight. Yet, the sentence-oriented approach to writing is too often overlooked in favor of bland economy.Building Great Sentencesteaches you to write better sentences by luxuriating in the pleasures of language.

Award-winning Professor Brooks Landon draws on examples from masters of long, elegant sentences—including Don DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Samuel Johnson—to reveal the mechanics of how language works on thoughts and emotions, providing the tools to write powerful, more effective sentences.“The most erudite, readable book anyone has ever written on the sentence.”—Adrian Blevins, associate professor of English, Colby College
 
“AnElements of Stylefor the prodigious,Building Great Sentencesis a service to writers and a joy to read.”—R.M. Berry, professor, Florida State UniversityDr. Brooks Landonis Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Professor of English and Collegiate Fellow at The University of Iowa and Director of the University’s General Education Literature Program. He lives in Iowa.

Introduction

We live in a world of words. Digital media inundate us with language in a twenty-four/seven barrage never possible in the world of printer’s ink. Constant Web updates, blogs, e-mails, instant messaging, tweets, Facebook comments, and a cascade of electronic texts give us expanded opportunities to share our writing with others. Even in the age of Skype and FaceTime we continue tlÓ.