A
sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought. It
begins with a capital letter and ends with a dot which we call a
period or full stop. This dot, and most punctuation marks, were
invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium, around 200 BC. It didn't
originally indicate the end of a sentence but the place someone who
was reading out loud could pause to breathe. Somewhere in elementary
school, we were all told that whenever we reach a period, we should
take a deep breath, and I think we mostly do!
You
might think that nothing could be further from the truth. To begin
with, you don't normally read out loud. You can hardly remember who
your elementary school teacher was, much less what she had said. And
breathing is a necessity of life that usually occurs without much
thought. So how can periods possibly control your breathing when you
read to yourself? Nonsense right? Dead wrong! The average reader has
somehow been trained by experience to take a full breath every time
he reaches a period. Try reading a long sentence that has no commas
(without thinking about it), and you'll think that you are asthmatic.
You'll practically gasp for breath, almost choke. But where as a poor
author by improper use of the period may suffocate his reader, a good
one can use the period to affect his emotional state!
Consider
anxiety,
for example. It is a necessary ingredient in most genres and in fact
almost all novels. It is usually induced in a scene by the action,
the dialogue and the setting. When people are relaxed, they take
even, deep breaths with their abdomen. When they are anxious they
tend to take rapid, shallow breaths that come directly from the
chest. This process also works the other way. It is well known that
one of the ways you can induce relaxation is by taking deep and even
breaths. By the same token you can induce anxiety by rapid, shallow
ones. If we breathe every time we see a period, what will happen if
the distance, and hence the time, between periods is short? You don't
need a PhD to understand that a series of very short sentences,
irregardless of the content, will induce anxiety!
I
have to admit that I have not read this explicitly somewhere but good
authors are not scientists. They don't write by numbers! They simply
empathize with their anxious characters, get into an anxious state
and write ...short sentences. It's easy to verify. Just pick-up one
of your favourite novels, locate a spot where the characters
experience anxiety and note the length of the sentences. I have found
this to generally hold in most of my favourite thrillers. Let me
quote you a passage:
Things
weren’t bad at all! I got away from the monster and his murderers.
I had disappeared into the dark sea. Gone! I couldn’t even hear the
yacht’s engines. They probably hadn’t even missed me. And if they
missed me and turned back, where would they look? Where had I jumped
off? How far out had I swum? They had a hell of a large area to
search. Even if someone told them exactly where I was, even if they
came within reach, I would be difficult to find. The swell had
roughed-up the sea and my black suit would disappear against the dark
water. And in the one chance in a million, the perfect fluke, they
came close enough to breathe down on my neck, I could dive. There was
no way they could ever find me again. No way they could get me. I
would get to my target though! I was well equipped and navigation was
easy. And the swimming was almost a pleasure! Wasn’t it chic to go
for a midnight swim? And I wasn’t totally out of shape. I could go
on forever! Or could I? If I could, wouldn’t I feel more relaxed?
Would I feel pain slowly spread in my arms and legs? Why did my
oxygen-starved lungs sting? Why was I fatigued? Why was I scared?
In
the text quoted there are exclamation and question marks as well as
periods but the former are also breathing points. Note that even
though the narrator is trying to calm himself, the punctuation marks
and the short sentences still bring anxiety. Here is another example:
God
Almighty! Now I was in for it! I couldn’t fight with a helicopter!
I was too slow and unarmed, I was practically helpless. A sitting
duck! All they had to do was shine their light on me, lift their gun
in my direction and pull a trigger. Damn, bloody water. But perhaps
they weren’t ordered to shoot me. I mean the Coin Tsar would want
me alive. There was a little matter with a fourree decadrachm he
wanted. He was obsessed. And if he didn’t want it, damn the
bastard! He would probably get me but I wasn’t going to make it
easy for him. Instinctively my hand went down to my knife and grasped
the handle.
Even
though you started reading from the middle of the book, note how
quickly the point of view (“I”), your natural will to survive and
of course the length of the sentences brought immediate anxiety.
I
have only used anxiety
as an example, but by using the same mechanism, a good author can
give his sentences a form that will enhance his words and their
connotation. If, for example, his characters are running out of
breath because they are long distance runners or divers, long
sentences without commas would lead the reader to run out of breath
as well. This could be as, or even more, effective than any
description. Immediately before a love scene, when the about to be
lovers look at each other, their breaths first deepen. Then as they
approach each other and touch their breathing becomes faster and
shallower. A love scene therefore usually starts with long sentences
that get progressively shorter as the lovers approach and touch.
It
is obvious that the speed at which we read can also affect our
emotional state. Speed readers usually don't read every word but sort
of glance over the text, so their breathing is not affected. But
people who read at a fast pace, will reach periods in quick
succession and irregardless of what is happening in the book will
tend to breathe quickly and get anxious. Slow readers on the other
hand will complete sentences slowly and their breathing will be slow
and deep.
If
the latter are not alert, it would only be a matter of time before
they fall asleep!
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