New Word: Asyndeton

Here’s a word with limited use, a word that imo doesn’t sound like what it means, a word that looks a bit like it should be the title of an SF novel: Asyndeton.

What does this word mean? It means, at least it can mean, refraining from putting in conjunctions where you normally would. Two of the sentences prior to this one demonstrate this technique.

Did you notice? I know some of you are writers, some are editors, and some of you query my commas when you’re proofreading, so maybe you did! Would you, ordinarily, if you were just reading a novel? I would notice because this sort of stylistic choice is something I think I always notice, even when I’m immersed in the story. I would notice, and I would either think, amateurish or nice, depending on whether I thought the technique worked artistically in the sentence.

This word is from – did you guess this? – Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, which I picked up last night because I was tired and thought, fine, I’ll write a blog post instead of going on with a serious project. Here is what Tufte says:

One name for refraining from conjunctions is asyndeton. Often whole clauses are juxtaposed in this somewhat noncommittal way. Fully independent, they are not attached to one another, they touch but are not connected. Below we see their judicious use by professional writers.

The streets were empty, the slates shone purple. – Sean O’Faolain, I Remember! I Remember!

The fog had all gone, the wind had risen. – CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength.

She is thirteen, she will be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. It takes time. – Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower.

Tufte suggests that this technique may work best with short sentences and clauses; that it may not work as well with longer clauses; and that it may be especially useful if the author wants a sense of rushing speed or urgency:

She must rush, she must hurry, before it was too late. Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent.

But Tufte also notes that using this technique can produce a relaxed feel:

Everyone was beautiful and gentle, everyone was poor, no one was smart. On summer evening they danced in the half-light, and when they were tired of dancing they lay down in the forest, on the beach, on mattresses, on the bare floor. – Steven Spender, “September Journal.”

I sometimes find myself using this technique – I will try to remember to say asyndeton – when I write a sentence that is a series, but leave out the terminal and. Sometimes at other times as well. Various characters are more likely to have this occur when they’re thinking. Tano is one of those characters, which may be why this entry in Tufte’s book caught my eye. For example, from Tano —

The winter had passed strangely, we had come from the past summer almost to spring in hardly more than a heartbeat because the days had been so strange in the land of the shades.

and

I should have expected that, obviously that was the only way he could evade my arrow, but I had not, and almost missed entirely.

Leaving out conjunctions is, for me, essentially always a deliberate choice, because eagle-eyed proofreaders do query commas, semicolons, comma splices, and lack of a terminal “and” in a list, so I usually do note those queries, then choose to leave out the terminal conjunction.

Also, that fourteen, fifteen, sixteen thing is part of Ugaro syntax; it’s common when an Ugaro person is estimating numbers or time. It’s exactly the same. “Four hands of time, six, eight.” Or “The distance is five bowshots, six, seven.” In this case, it’s so obviously deliberate that I don’t think anybody has every queried it.

In Tufte’s book, this section occurs in a chapter on conjunctions and coordinators, and I will just note that Tufte says casually in passing, “Professional writers often use a conjunction as a sentence opener, a position where it helps with cohesion,” and I certainly do wish grade school teacher – and high school teachers, and no doubt college teachers as well – would take note of this. You’d think anybody who read books, and here I mean great books that are brilliantly written, would notice that “professional writers often use a conjunction as a sentence opener,” because it’s not like this is rare. It’s really inexplicable that so many English teachers emphatically tell their students that it’s not okay to start a sentence with “and,” and, while we’re on the subject, why is that the rules that stick with students through thick and thin, come hell or high water, are nonsensical rules that don’t actually exist? Why not rules such as “IT’S means IT IS or IT HAS and is NEVER possessive,” because that would be a lot more use.

Also, it’s mildly amusing to me, and also mildly irritating, that English teachers who are SURE it’s not okay to start a sentence with “and” are nevertheless perfectly fine with sentences that start with “moreover,” and you’d think ENGLISH teachers would understand the sentence is structurally EXACTLY THE SAME whether the conjunction is short or long, but here we are.

Anyway, here is the example sentence I like best, though the context seems obscure:

He made the Emperor laugh and the horse couldn’t better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends. – Jeanette Winterson, The Passion.

I have no clue, but I do like the structure. This also demonstrates how short sentences can have punch, especially if they’re preceded by longer, more complicated sentences.

Tufte also illustrates sentences where and is used repeatedly within a series, which is another technique that I have seen pointed to as wrong or bad. It’s not wrong or bad; it’s effective or ineffective, and which depends on rhythm and tone, not some arbitrary fake rule about what you’re allowed to do with conjunctions.

In the distance the houses were the houses in a Victorian print, small and precisely drawn and quiet; only one child, a long way off. — Graham Green, The End of the Affair.

Here’s a longer example, quite beautiful:

Or the market on a Saturday morning, where the colours of the fruits and vegetables and the colours of the clothes people are wearing and the colour of the day itself, and the colour of the nearby sea, and the colour of the sky, which is just overhead and seems so close you might reach up and touch it, and the way people there speak English (they break it up) and the way they might be angry with each other and the sound they make when they laugh, all of this is so beautiful, all of this is not real like any other real thing that there is. – Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place.

I’m going to end with a passage from a book I know (I am CERTAIN) I was required to read at some point, but do not remember at all. Now I’m peeved, because if I’d paid attention to the syntax in this book, I bet I would have liked it better at the time and would also remember it better now:

But he calmed himself, and took out the heavy maize cakes and the tea, and put them upon a stone. And he gave thanks, and broke the cakes, and ate them, and drank of the tea. Then he gave himself over to deep and earnest prayer, and, after each petition, he raised his eyes and looked to the east. And the east lightened and lightened, till he knew that the time was not far off. And when he expected it, he rose to his feet and took off his hat and laid it down on the earth and clasped his hands before him. And while he stood there the sun rose in the east. –Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country.

I also bet that if this or some syntactically similar passage were hung on the wall of all English classrooms, a lot fewer teachers would tell their students that you can’t start a sentence with “and.” That would be great.

***

While writing the above post, I also thought about the conviction with which nonexistent rules are frequently cited and commonly believed, such as “you can’t start a sentence with and” or “you shouldn’t use and repeatedly in a series,” and I found myself thinking:

People who cite rules like this, either rules that really do exist or rules that don’t, are acting like “fault judges.”

“Fault judging” is a phenomenon in dog shows – probably in other venues, too – where a judge doesn’t know anything much about functional structure or about type. They’ve memorized the standard, though, especially the faults. Therefore, this judge will step into the ring, look at the single greatest example of the breed that has ever existed in the world, say, “Light eyes, not for me,” and put that dog at the end of the line instead of putting him up for winners. All the judge has is a checklist of faults (“light eyes”). He has no sense of quality or ability to recognize greatness. All he sees are faults. He doesn’t see the dog at all. Fault judges therefore consistently put mediocre dogs without obvious faults up for winners, while totally failing to see and reward greatness.

As a side note, I’m thinking of light eyes in particular because the greatest Smooth Fox Terrier who ever lived is widely considered to be Ttarb The Brat, a dog who sired 130 champions and stamped his character indelibly on the entire breed. What an excellent, skilled, knowledgeable judge said about The Brat, as he beckoned him to the front of the line, was (this is a famous quote I saw in Anne Rogers Clark’s book): “Worst eyes I’ve ever seen on a great dog.” Only a fault judge would fail to hand The Brat winners and best of winners. A fault judge couldn’t see the greatness, only the light color of the eyes.

This, it seems to me, is what is going on when someone says, “The writing here is terrible – look how this author overuses and in this list!” (Which I have seen people say.) They are looking at something like that passage from A Small Place by Kincade or Cry, the Beloved Country by Paton, but they’re not seeing that passage at all. They’re seeing a nonexistent “rule” being “broken” and they’re saying, “Look, such bad writing!”

Just as some judges see quality and greatness when they look at a dog and some don’t, some reader see (or hear) rhythm and style when they read a paragraph – and some readers don’t. If an author cares at all about style as well as story, then I bet they’re aware of rhythm and syntax, even if they never (as I never, until now) encountered the word asyndeton.