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2. Analyze Your Own Style. Assemble some pieces you have written, preferably of a similar type, and study them for style. Do you have some favorite stylistic moves? What sentence shapes (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, highly parallel, periodic, or cumulative) dominate in your writing? What verbs? Do you use forms of “to be” a lot, and so forth?

3. Find Go-To Sentences. As we discuss in Chapter 2, whether we recognize it or not, most of us have a “go-to” sentence—the sentence shape we repeatedly go to as we write and talk. If a person’s “go-to” sentence takes the form “Although ______, the fact is that _____,” we might see that person as inclined to qualify his or her thoughts (“Although”) and disinclined to immediately impose his or her ideas on others (“the fact that” comes in the second half of the sentence, where it gets a lot of emphasis but is also delayed and qualified by the sentence’s opening observation).

First, select one sentence in something you’ve been reading that you think is typical of that writer’s way of putting sentences together. Describe that sentence shape and speculate about what it accomplishes and how it reveals the writer’s characteristic mode of thinking in some way.

Then find a “go-to” sentence of your own in something that you’ve written. What does this structure reveal to you about how you think? Tip: You can also use The Method to locate “go-to” sentences. Look for repeated conjunctions or subordinators, such as “x; however, y” or “although x, nevertheless, y,” or “not only x, but also y.”

4. Discuss the Style of Sentences You Like. This exercise is a companion to Try This 18.2; it aims to give you more practice at seeing the shapes of sentences. Listed below are five sentences our students like; use these or find your own candidates. As in the Try This, do the following operations:

• identify which of the four types it is

• underline the subject and verb of the main clause(s)

• double-underline the subordinate clauses

• circle the coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions

In addition, bring to bear the other lenses you’ve acquired in the latter parts of the chapter. What do you notice about the verbs? The order of clauses? Where do you detect elements of the periodic and cumulative, the antithetical or chiasmic? Write a paragraph or two about the style of each sentence.

a. “Where is the powerful being who will crush all these reptiles who corrupt everything they touch, and whose venomous bites stir up our citizens, transforming their political assemblies into gladiatorial arenas where each passion, each interest, finds apologists and an army?” (Chaumet, attorney of the Parisian Commune, Sept 5, 1793)

b. From newspaper baron Lord Northcliffe: “News is what somebody somewhere is trying to suppress. The rest is advertising.” (Ben McGrath, “Roid Warriors.” The New Yorker, 9 March 2009)

c. “On the all-important question of power—the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power—American and European perspectives are diverging.” (Kagan, Robert. “Why the United States and Europe See the World Differently.” Policy Review 113. (2002))

d. “Republican jibes that the budget was ‘socialist’ should be treated with the respect they deserve, which is to say none: after a major rise in outlays this year, due to the stimulus package, federal spending as a share of the gross domestic product is projected to fall back to twenty-two percent by 2013, which represents a rise of just one percent over last year’s figure.” (John Cassidy, “Harder Times.” The New Yorker, 16 March 2009.)

e. “Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Self Reliance.” The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Brooks Atkinson. New York: Modern Library, 2000).

5. Analyze the Gettysburg Address. For many people, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is one of the best examples of the careful matching of style to situation. Delivered after a long talk by a previous speaker at the dedication of