Syntax & Word Order
Periodic Sentence
A sentence that saves its main clause for the end, stacking qualifying material first. The reader carries everything forward until the close snaps it into meaning. Suspense built from grammar.
"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree… Sing, Heav'nly Muse." — Milton
Don't confuse it with. The loose/cumulative sentence is its opposite: main clause first, modifiers trailing after.
In the Reader — 6 excerpts
Sing, Heavenly Muse...
Sing, Heavenly Muse...
fortune, must be in want of a wife.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
costliness and splendor with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
side of Lake Superior at three o'clock. Two days before the event was to take place he tacked a note on the door of his little yellow house: At 3:00 P.M. on Wednesday the 18th
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with periodic sentence most often — company reveals character.
Anaphora 7 Parataxis 5 Antithesis 4 Chiasmus 4 Personification 3 Irony 3 Polysyndeton 3 Metonymy 3
The rest of the family
Hyperbaton Anastrophe Cumulative (Loose) Sentence Parataxis Parenthesis Apposition / Appositive Zeugma Hendiadys Pleonasm Enumeration / Accumulatio Passive Voice Cleft Sentence