Reading this article made me immediately think about Russian literature, particularly from the 19th century. Mostly because of my background and how I am still working on adopting to English in my speaking and writing. Russian authors of that time are famous for their elaborate, intricate, and syntactically rich sentences. This isn’t unique just to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and even Bulgakov later on. The Russian literary tradition is about constructing entire emotional and philosophical worlds within a single sentence where thoughts cascade into one another with modifiers piling up like layers of nested parentheses. Punctuation in Russian has its special role and many school children will describe feeling utterly tormented trying to use it correctly. However, besides rather complicated rules if to compare to English, punctuation in Russian functions more as emotional pacing rather than just strict grammatical markers.
This style encourages contemplation rather than efficiency. There is an obvious contrast with contemporary English, and American English in particular. In the modern technological age, journalism styles and contemporary design principles inspire authors to craft sentences that quickly capture attention and facilitate scanning rather than deep immersion.
Long sentences are often dismissed in contemporary writing because readers accustomed to quick, concise information can lose patience or attention, leading authors to favor brevity for maintaining engagement.
Reading this article made me immediately think about Russian literature, particularly from the 19th century. Mostly because of my background and how I am still working on adopting to English in my speaking and writing. Russian authors of that time are famous for their elaborate, intricate, and syntactically rich sentences. This isn’t unique just to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and even Bulgakov later on. The Russian literary tradition is about constructing entire emotional and philosophical worlds within a single sentence where thoughts cascade into one another with modifiers piling up like layers of nested parentheses. Punctuation in Russian has its special role and many school children will describe feeling utterly tormented trying to use it correctly. However, besides rather complicated rules if to compare to English, punctuation in Russian functions more as emotional pacing rather than just strict grammatical markers.
This style encourages contemplation rather than efficiency. There is an obvious contrast with contemporary English, and American English in particular. In the modern technological age, journalism styles and contemporary design principles inspire authors to craft sentences that quickly capture attention and facilitate scanning rather than deep immersion.
Long sentences are often dismissed in contemporary writing because readers accustomed to quick, concise information can lose patience or attention, leading authors to favor brevity for maintaining engagement.