This entry is NOT titled "How to Write a Good Sentence"

(One of my students gave me a gift card for a retail store. The card had artwork on its front, and this is a detail—I didn't manipulate it in any way... I like it because it reminds me of words in a book.)

Dear diary,

I wanted to title this entry “How to Write a Good Sentence” but then I got cold feet because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sustain such a subject for 800 words. (My job description stipulates that each of my entries must contain exactly 800 words.) But let me begin as if I had given it this title, and we’ll see how long I last; and when I get bored, I’ll just change the topic.

Now the reason I titled this entry “How to Write a Good Sentence” is that I want to teach you about virtue and excellence, so that you can become a better person. However, there’s this problem: I myself have no idea how to write a good sentence. I couldn’t write a good sentence if my life depended on it; that is to say, if you held a gun to my head. (Believe me, I’ve tried.) But this shouldn’t stop you from being able to learn from me; you’ll just have to take my lesson as a negative model: a path not to follow; the way to avoid. Which is, in fact, how I myself became a decent person in this world: I just studied the acts of my parents & then did the polar opposite.

So let’s start with dispelling this false rumor about every sentence needing a subject and a predicate. Also forget about nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. A good sentence MAY contain these things, but it’s not a necessity. All a sentence truly needs is a period. (Hint: it doesn’t even need that.) The period is the dot at the end of the string of nonsense. So here are four samples of passable sentences:

1. What if both ands and Car-Car War Tar shunt!!!
2. My favorite spouse is a politician who resembles the dog Lassie from the TV series Lassie.
3. Spray-on gladiator gown 45 shall remain 33 until 69 or 100.
4. Tristan Tzara addressed the United Nations as follows: “HOWL [etc....]”

The only other rule for composing superior sentences is that you balance your shorter sentences with your run-on sentences. There’s something in the human mind that naturally cherishes the act of oscillation: that’s why you see it everywhere in life: it’s why all beings breathe; and why the heart keeps beating, and scared fish swim in zigzag patterns; and it’s why fornication manifests itself as an “in-&-out” motion, like the piston of a car. To demonstrate, here’s an example of a very brief sentence:

Jesus wept.

And here’s an example of a tastefully meandering, run-on sentence:

God the Father from up in Heaven lowered himself to the level of the cross & hovered there & smacked the weeping lad across the face & answered his whining, “Why have I forsaken thee? because you displeased me with your political movement; you know that I am anti-forgiveness (which means I’m AGAINST it, not FOR it), since to implement such a scam would deprive me of the right of judging everyone & then damning the majority of souls — remember that it took me an six extra days to create the abyss of Hell, after crafting the Heavens and the Earth; & why should I make it, if I can’t use it?” then he shot the lad with lightnings.

So an adept writer would combine that initial short sentence above with the run-on sentence that follows it; then write a few more short and longer sentences, and arrange them in an alternating fashion, and continue this pattern till death: this will leave you with one paragraph. Pile up a few more paragraphs, and you have yourself a gospel. Bind four gospels together with some miscellaneous letters that you’ve written to the editors of various churches or newspapers, and top off your collection with a super mean story about worldwide destruction (let the gentlest character from your earlier gospels serve as the vengeful destroyer, in an unexpected plot twist) & make sure the conclusion of your own last scripture links up with the beginning of the initial Holy Book from the commandeered collection — like a serpent sucking its own tail, its Genesis should lick your Revelation) — then bind your own book together with those older, authoritative scriptures, and call your addition “the fulfillment of all these ancient writings”. The result will be a bestseller, and many movies will be adapted from it. (Trust me, I used to work in a Christian bookstore.)

But the focus of this essay is how to write a good sentence, not how to use psyops to concoct and market a cult that will brainwash the galaxy. So let’s give a few more examples of really good sentences, as a perfect way to end this:

• Joe pushed his lawnmower from one end of his yard to the other.
• Jane fell from the helicopter and landed feet-first in a sycamore.
• Jack jumped over the candlestick to avoid his attorney.
• Jeffrey thrust a harpoon thru his computer screen after enjoying a teleconference.
• Beth answered the phone with a trembling voice, “Hello?”
• The can of soup came alive and started making slurping sounds during the seance.
• Eighteen vans drove over the waterfall and drowned.
• Sunshine ruins everything that it touches.
• A microwave oven and an eggbeater have many traits in common; for example, they both own and operate successful businesses: respectively, the company that confiscated all the spoons from the Martians who were migrating to Saturn, and the corporation that patented the fake blood that is used by hotels to paint the word “WELCOME” over their front doors.
• The squirrel placed its claw squarely in the palm of my hand, as if to say: “Thank you for that sermon; I really needed it.”