Hardly a week goes by that we don't hear about another marvelous breakthrough in medicine, a startling discovery in physics, or some fresh technological marvel. Even anthropologists and archaeologists stir up interest by unearthing "new" remains, and historians regularly uncover letters, deeds, and diaries that alter our perceptions of the past. But unlike these other professionals, specialists in language (linguists, grammarians, rhetoricians, and the like) seldom make an appearance on CNN--or even on the Discovery Channel.
As William Zinsser noted in his classic text On Writing Well, "We're in no danger of reading in our morning newspaper that a breakthrough has been made in how to write a clear English sentence--that information has been around since the King James Bible."
Yet looked at another way, such breakthroughs occur every day--whenever an aspiring writer discovers how to subordinate a clause, shape an appositive, or craft a participial phrase. Although the basic sentence structures have been around for centuries, each writer must discover on his or her own how to use those structures effectively.
So today's headline (at Grammar & Composition, at least) points to the achievements of all those who approach writing in a spirit of discovery, finding their distinctive voices in a syntax that has served many other writers for a very long time. Discover our news at Basic Sentence Structures.
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