Think before you write

This is a sentence. As is this — not an exceptionally beautiful one, but a sentence all the same, just telling you what it needs to tell you, just getting on with things, doing its job. Sentences are everyday, functional things, ubiquitous and unappreciated. And Joe Moran thinks it’s about time we started noticing them.

First You Write a Sentence is an often impassioned attempt to get us to take sentences seriously. Moran is interested in how they work — in how written language works, in construction and effect — and in sentences’ function as carefully assembled units of communication. That ‘carefully’ is especially important. Sentences are everywhere, formed without much attention and used without much thought, but Moran wants to encourage an alertness to their construction.

Some of the book’s most compelling sections seem indeed to be about this very thing: not about nouns and verbs, or monosyllables and vowel sounds, but about care.