In a narrative, the chief duty of a sentence is to lead to the next sentence. Beyond this basic, invisible job, the narrative sentence can of course do an infinite number of audible, palpable, beautiful, surprising, powerful things. In order to do them, it needs one quality above all: coherence. A sentence has to hang together. Incoherent, straggling, patched-together sentences can’t lead seamlessly to the next sentence, because they can’t even hold themselves together. Good grammar is pretty much like good engineering: the machine works because the parts do. Careless grammar is bad design
...more
