‘A prose you can control’

 Long, long ago, a bunch of newspaper editors were inexplicably herded into a conference room and forced to sit through a lecture delivered by me. The topic was good writing.

I projected the opening sentence of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici onto the screen. I pointed out that Religio Medici is one of the great works of English literature and that its opening sentence is a showstopper. It’s also 204 words long.

I stopped talking and gave the editors three minutes of silence to contemplate the sentence. When it became evident that more time was needed for the editors to grasp what Sir Thomas was saying, I added a couple of minutes of extra time, as they do in soccer. When it became evident that yet more time was needed, I made a plea for short sentences.

Years later, Verlyn Klinkenborg made the case far better than I did that day.

 

Why short sentences?

They’ll sound strange for a while until you can hear

what they’re capable of.

But they carry you back to a prose you can control,

To a stage in education where your diction — your

vocabulary — was under control too.

 

For the truly curious, here’s Sir Thomas’s sentence:

 

For my Religion, though there be severall circumstances that might perswade the world I have none at all, as the generall scandal of my profession, the naturall course of my studies, the indifferency of my behaviour, and discourse in matters of Religion, neither violently defending one, nor with the common ardor of contention opposing another; yet in despight hereof I dare, without usurpation, assume the honorable stile of a Christian: not that I merely owe this title to the Font, my education, or the Clime wherein I was borne, as being bred up either to confirme those principles my Parents instilled into my unwary understanding; or by a generall consent proceed in the Religion of my Countrey; but that having in my riper yeares, and confirmed judgement, seene and examined all, I finde my selfe obliged by the principles of Grace, and the law of mine owne reason, to embrace no other name than this; neither doth herein my zeale so farre make me forget the generall charitie I owe unto humanity, as rather to hate then pity Turkes, Infidels, and (what is worse) the Jewes, rather contenting my selfe to enjoy that happy stile, then maligning those who refuse so glorious a title.   

 

Sir Thomas probably wrote that sentence in 1636. He often was thought-provoking, disturbing, outrageously wrong and interesting. I think he could control a 204-word sentence. Most of us cannot.

• Sources: Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several short sentences about writing; New York: Vintage Books, 2012, p. 9.

Sir Thomas Browne, Selected Writings, edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes; The University of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 7.