Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style

"Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style" by Virginia Tufte is a book about sentence structure. I give the book a 5-star in admiration for Virginia Tufte's work on putting the book together. Tufte uses hundreds of examples throughout the book. She describes a kind of sentence structure (syntactic categories, as she calls it) and then gives examples from writings. I would like to give a quote from the book by Tufte to help anyone thinking about buying the book: Writing is difficult. Whether a writer’s sensitivities are informed by one or several languages, it is not easy to capture a unique perception or idea in poetry or prose. Professional writers, however, do the best they can in whatever circumstances they find themselves. That best is often eloquent and precise, artful but unpretentious enough to become a model for other writers. A critic who reports on a syntactic habit of a certain author’s style, or on some other verbal effect, by importing that very characteristic into her own style offers a nice sort of evidence for the conclusion of this chapter and the end of the book. One premise of this volume has been that syntax and style are reciprocal concerns—that it can make good sense, and help to make good prose, to think of syntax as style. The chapters have exhibited more than a thousand sentences on the assumption that good style is learned by emulation of authors who display it. As the examples show, although the syntactic means are relatively simple and few, the stylistic effects are countless. This is the nature, the great beauty of approaching the art of the sentence through syntactic categories along with prolific displays of the splendid sentences good writers achieve. "Artful Sentences" shows specific skills, widely applicable, that a writer can learn. It offers models that can be imitated, organizing them in a way that makes them accessible and comprehensive. Forms that seem limited, and even limiting, in fact offer a range of opportunities to a writer in command of them—and one who knows how to transgress against them—to achieve undreamed of effectiveness, grace, and versatility.

Never realized how much I wanted a book like this. If you're looking for "inspiration," musings on the nature of creativity, touching reminiscences, or heartfelt words of encouragement, you'll find none of that here. This book is all business, nothing but technical analysis, model sentences followed by commentary of their grammatical structure and associated effects on the tone of the work. It's great. Rather than use cute stories and motivational phrases to try and get you in the "writing mood," it actually teaches you the skills to become a better writer. I laugh at the reviews complaining that the author uses big funny terms and looks at everything in a really technical way—it's called grammar. Turns out a solid understanding of the way our language works can really help with writing what you mean. It's like what you try to learn by reading all the great authors in the hopes of absorbing some glimmer of their style, but distilled. It almost feels like cheating on a book report by just reading the Sparknotes. And to be clear, Virginia Tufte was a professor of English at USC for 25 years. Her son (not husband!) was the famed scholar Edward Tufte, whose name you might be familiar with if you've ever studied data visualization. Both are VERY well regarded in their fields. So it especially annoyed me to read a rather sexist review insinuating that she was just "some woman" publishing on her husband's imprint, as if a woman couldn't possibly have any talent or skill of her own. The printing is also very high quality—crisp text and thick cream paper. Highly recommend.

This is a writerly book for lovers of language used well. It dissects sentence composition with amazing detail and insight, beginning with short declarative sentences and working up to longer and more complex forms. It is not a grammar reference; it is a study in masterly wordcraft, aimed at those who already understand the tools of language and wish to learn to employ them effectively. Tufte classifies sentence types systematically, and demonstrates how each type contributes to the tone, rhythm, impact, and other aspects of the literary style of the written work. Every tiny variation is illustrated with well-chosen examples from works of quality. The collected content is an organized survey of sentence types and writing techniques, discussed and explained with expertise and sensitivity. She does not treat language as a grab-bag of specific tools, to be plugged into prose for particular effects; instead, she treats writing as a skillful art which can be approached deliberately and analyzed objectively, in ways that allow authors to achieve their own goals through purposeful application. The result is a painstaking study of the importance of sentence structure to the functioning of the sentence in the larger work - a technician's view of the workings of writing at the component level, written with an adept's finesse. This book is a must for anyone who writes and is dedicated to their writing-craft, or for anyone who reads and aspires to a true appreciation of what writing is. It is a treasure of scholarship done brilliantly and with feeling.

I read this book a few pages at a time over a couple of months. It is rich with examples – literally thousands of sentences from acclaimed and not so-acclaimed writers are examined. Tufte’s observations and analysis are excellent, but for someone like me, who hasn’t diagrammed a sentence in decades, sometimes hard to fully grasp. For me it was a little like reading something in French, I understood the words, but the meaning was occasionally elusive and required me to go back and look at what she said after I studied the examples. That’s not a defect of the book. This is a challenging book for someone who is not strong in grammar terms, but that shouldn’t dissuade someone from reading it. For me it was the worth the challenge. And I’m going to read it again.

Virginia Tufte continues where "Grammar as Style" left off. She analyzes different sentence types, breaks them down into phrases, clauses, literary terms, and parts of speech, adds an observation or two, and then gives you some tasty examples from famous and obscure writers. If you're a writer you'll be licking your lips as you read the examples. During my first read, I found the English teacher analysis a bit boring, and I didn't want to take the time to struggle with the terminology, but the examples were so exciting I'm sure I'll take the time to take the time to do so later. I'd recommend reading the examples first, and then later, if so inclined read the analysis. Tuft, Christenson, and Landon all advocate writing a variety of sentences, longer sentences, as well as short sentences, which flies in the face of traditional writing instruction found in Strunk and most textbooks. "Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style" is a must for any serious writer. She examines short sentences, noun phrases, verb phrases, adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and coordination, dependent clauses, sentence openers and inversion, free modifiers, the appositive, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory, parallelism (balanced sentences), cohesion, and syntactic symbolism. If you enjoy this book you might try Professor Brooks Landon's "Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft" from the Teaching Company, 24 lectures on DVD and/or CD.

This book is great for studying how various syntactical elements of sentences function and how they can be used to enhance a sentence's style. It's not about "proper" grammar and though it refers to "style" it's not a collection of small "do's and don'ts" like "Elements of Style"; it's about understanding how syntax affects the clarity or impact of a sentence by examining how the parts of sentences work. It's not light and breezy reading, more like a book you read then keep on hand to reread as a reference source. As far as grammar goes, I found I needed to keep a basic grammar book handy to look up terms used by Tufte, so this isn't a grammar handbook. I used Kolln's "Understanding English Grammar".

Tufte's fine book receives a range of reviews on Amazon, from those declaring it a must own for writers to those who describe it as not worth the paper on which it is printed. While I fall firmly in the former camp, I think I understand the reason many find "Artful Sentences" so worthy of execration. There is nothing sexy about Tufte's volume; indeed, it may be the least sexy craft book I've ever read (and I own and have read a multitude). Her dry style and thick layering of examples can be off putting. Several times you may find yourself wishing that she would stop on one example and fully dissect the application of a given structure or concept. Yes, it is dry. However, as a book of craft this book does an excellent job breaking down the different sentence structures. A thoughtful writer will spend a lot of time considering her examples and will find him or herself pausing as they read other books considering how different authors deploy their tools. The chapters here build one upon the other and present a whole which delineates not simply the rules of grammar, but suggests how far, in the hands of a host of talented authors, they can be bent.

i'm a retired hs english teacher of almost 40 yrs. i was convinced to buy this book on the recommendation of a valued author and educational critic. the layout is workable, but not interesting unless you are already interested in the subject matter. i was somewhat interested, but did not find that the material in the books was either novel or imaginative. some of the illustrations were fine, others were unconvincing. i got a good price so i don't consider it a waste of money, but i usually read substantial parts of a nonfiction book before i buy. this was harder to do because it isn't that popular. i see why...

An excellent book. Just what I have been seeking. An in depth collection and study of syntax and sentences. Informative and very useful, the book is stuffed full of examples and is very in depth with its analysis of those sentences.

Antes de comprarlo, me encontré con el libro del esposo de Virginia, Edward Tufte, y me fascinó. Sin embargo, no es un libro fácil de encontrar y ya es un clásico en gráficos para estadísticas. Ya pensándolo, me decidí por este libro pues la forma en que reunió todos los fragmentos con un tema gramatical específico es una labor titánica. Es decir, hizo una compilación increíble. No sólo es encontrar el tema gramatical en un texto, sino que lo ejemplifique con gran estética. La forma y el fondo se encuentran en este libro. Además, no sólo incluye obras literarias narrativas, se da el tiempo de incluir textos de varias ciencias con una redacción sorprendente. You'll find it very inspiring and useful for your own writing.

Excellent elaboration of sentence structure! Highly recommend.

Ein sehr schönes Buch, welches zeigt, wie elegant die englische Sprache sein kann :-) A beautiful book, showing the elegance of the english language.

Helps one to write sentence of greater length and still be concise.