…not supposed to be one ongoing sentence. It has commas, and fullstops.
Courtesy of facebook, I’ve been reminded that this was on my mind 8 years ago today.
When I read it, I confess to being a bit like, “Oh really?”. I tried to see if I could remember what may have prompted such a thought. I couldn’t.
Timeline wise, I was just a few months away from making my move overseas. However, at the time of this status, I still didn’t know if it was going to happen as planned. There’d been some hiccups in the process, things that were still not lined up, things that needed confirming etc. I was in limbo. So maybe that was it…
Or maybe, it had been a really busy time. And I was expressing the need to stop and take a breath…
We are taught in school, that we shouldn’t use overly long sentences. Even with the use of commas. Having literally just checked with my teacher friend why this is, she shared the following.
A long sentence can be hard for your reader to engage with. If the grammar, clauses, etc. aren’t right, the reader could get bored; the meaning of the sentence can change, or be misunderstood. (Btw, pls don’t start watching my -Janice’s- grammar too closely!)
When teaching about ‘text type’, the criteria is that a child can use a range of varying sentence structures. Short and long. It is about impact. So of the two sentences, “He said, “Stop it.”” and “Stop it!“, the second would get more marks. It conveys more impact. – Courtesy of Ms Heels
Now before you think I’ve digressed into a teaching session, let me try to link this back to the opening quote.
Just imagine for a moment, being in a conversation with that person who doesn’t seem to use fullstops. Nor ‘come up for air‘. We’ve all been in one of those conversations. We may even have been the author of such conversations! Ones where the other person(s) ‘can’t get a word in edgeways‘.
Can you imagine if life was like that? An ongoing monologue, lacking in punctuation, with little opportunity for you to interject.
Or, that life was so encompassing, that you were just going and going and going… With no time to come up for air. Even though we know that oxygen is vital for life.
Maybe, 8 years ago today, I was alluding to this…
Or maybe it was just random, nonsensical musing! 🙂
Either way, it’s given me pause for thought. And prompted another blog post.
Maybe it will do the same for you…