AmLit Monday Bell Work – Punctuation (Day 4)

What is a periodic sentence? A sentence that delays the main point until the end (right before the period) in order to create suspense. They aren’t used often, but have a powerful effect – focusing your reader – when you use them. Just like everyone else, with grades and SAT scores like everyone else’s, early on, I learned that I drum like no one else. (In this example, the sentence would serve as an opener for a college application essay or a personal narrative essay)

Partner Chat: Discuss the effect of the periodic sentence, compared to the effect of the more traditional loose sentence. PeriodicLoose Just like everyone else, with grades and SAT scores like everyone else’s, early on, I learned that I drum like no one else. I drum like no one else, even though my SAT scores and grades are pretty much the same as everyone else’s. I am an exceptional drummer, even though my average SAT scores and grades are just like those of the average student.

How to Write Periodic Sentences Choose a simple direct statement of action. Start your sentence with the information you want to emphasize less. This could be a series of two or three dependent clauses (give information about main action or idea). Not while the car lurched then screeched to a halt, and only when the kerthump of the squirrel had echoed under its back tires, End with a simple statement (usually an independent clause), followed by a period. she exhaled.

Here Are Two More Examples “She never gives up. Her blue hair waved, circles of rouge on her wrinkled cheeks, lipstick etching the lines around her mouth, still moisturizing her skin nightly, still corseted, she dies.” – Una Stannard. “The Mask of Beauty,” A Woman’s Place “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” -- ____?____ ____?_____, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 1946.

Try to write a periodic sentence Choose one of these simple periodic clauses. I slept for hours. they stared across the field. he turned on the light. she let go of the rope. Write two or three clauses that end in your periodic clause. Separate the clauses with commas. Not sure what to do? As an alternative to writing a periodic sentence, read the handout on periodic sentences. Underline the delayed climactic clause in examples 1-4 on page 123.

Review A periodic sentence delays statements of the central idea until the end, right before the period. The important thought is deliberately withheld from the reader to create an emphatic ending effect. Placing the unknown, new, or important information in a sentence at the end of a sentence puts your idea at the “strategically most powerful point.” You don’t use periodic sentences often, however, they are useful in three ways: - emphasizing an important point by placing it next to the period. - encouraging writers to break out of habits of syntax. - pushing writers to express their ideas in new and unexpected ways merely by “trying on” the periodic sentence format.

Agenda Bell Work Homework Check (green worksheet, annotated article). Quiz, Chapters 8 and 9 Modernism Talk: Take Notes! Homework Due Tuesday – Complete the Socratic Seminar Prep. Packet