(4) VARIETY
How much recurrence, how much variety depend on sub-
ject and purpose. For instance, when you repeat the same
point or develop a series of parallel ideas, the similarity of
subject is enhanced of sentence
structure. Thus Adams repeats the same pattern in his second
through seventh sentences because they have much the same
content, detailing the steps President Harding took to divert
the scandal threatening his administration. Here the recurrent
style evolves from the subject.
In the other passage, however, the writer makes no such
connection between style and subject, and so the recurrence
seems awkward and monotonous. The ideas expressed in the
separate sentences are not of the same order of value. For
example, the fact that the theater is in Hartford is less im-
portant than that it shows foreign films. The sentence style,
in other words, does not reinforce the writer's ideas; it ob-
scures them.
Nor has the writer offered any relief from his short,
straightforward statements. Adams has. Moreover, Adams
uses variety effectively to structure his paragraph, opening
with a relatively long sentence, which, though grammatically
simple, is complicated by the correlative but" con-
struction. And he closes the paragraph by beginning a sen-
tence, for the first time, with something other than the
subject.
Adams's brief sentences work because the subject justifies
them and because they are sufficiently varied. Lacking similar
justification or relief, the four sentences of the first passage
are ineffective. They could be improved easily:
The Art Cinema, a movie theater in Hartford, specializes in

We took a hair-raising taxi ride into the city. The rush-hour traffic
of Bombay is a from dementia, as in Tokyo; nor
from exuberance, as in Rome; not from malice, as in Paris; it is a
chaos rooted in years of practiced confusion, absentmindedness,
selfishness, inertia, and an incomplete understanding of mechanics.
There are no discernible rules. James Cameron
Dave Beck was hurt. Dave Beck was He took the fifth
amendment when he was questioned and was forced off the ex-
ecutive board of the but he retained enough control of
his own union treasury to hire a stockade of lawyers to protect him.
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(4) VARIETY
Prosecution dragged in the courts. Convictions were appealed.
Delay. John Dos Passos
Sometimes variation in length can be used to emphasize a
key idea. In the following passage the historian Herbert But-
moves through two long sentences (the second a bit
shorter than the to a strong short statement:
The Whig historian is interested in discovering agency in history,
even where in this way he must avow it only implicit. It is char-
acteristic of his method that he should be interested in the agency
rather than in the process. And this is how he achieves his
simplification.
Fragments
Fragments, usually a special kind of short sentence, make for
effective to see and easy to use (italics high-
light the fragments in the next examples):
Sam steals like this because he is a thief. Not a big thief. He tried
to be a big thief once and everybody got mad at him and made
him go away to jail. He is strictly a small thief, and he only steals

than the usual subject and verb: a prepositional phrase; an
adverbial clause; a connective like therefore or an adverb like
naturally, or, immediately following the subject and splitting
it from the verb, a nonrestrictive adjectival construction. Take
a look at this passage:
In the first decade of the new century, the South remained primarily
rural; the beginnings of change, in those years, hardly affected the
lot of the Negro. The agricultural system had never recovered fully
from the destruction of the old plantation economy. Bound to the
production of cotton, rice, soil suf-
fered from erosion and neglect. Those who cultivated it depended
at best upon the uncertain returns of fluctuating world markets. But
the circumstances under which labor was organized, particularly
Negro labor, added to those difficulties further hardships of human
Creation. Oscar Handlin
Handlin's five sentences show considerable variety in their
openings: a prepositional phrase, a subject, a participial
phrase, a subject, and a connective word.
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(4) VARIETY
Interrupted Movement
a or even a second, in-
dependent sentence between main elements of a clause so that
pauses are required on either side of the var-
ies straightforward movement. Here the writer places a sec-
ond sentence between two clauses (italics added):
had halted on the road. As soon as saw the elephant knew with
perfect certainty that ought to shoot him. It is a serious matter to
shoot a working is comparable to destroying a huge
and costly piece of obviously one ought not to do