Fun exercise: run-on sentences
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:48 am
I'm not sure if anyone else here is a fan of the old BBC series Yes Minister, but for those who've never seen it before, here's a quick summary: the new Minister for Administrative Affairs, Jim Hacker, has a Permanent Secretary called Sir Humphrey Appleby. Humphrey must do his best to keep his minister in the dark about what is actually going on, and - to that end - he uses a variety of linguistic tools, one of which is the run-on sentence, which he uses to confuse Jim, his minister, because - at the end of the sentence - Jim has forgotten how the sentence began. 
So in the spirit of linguistic fun, I thought that we could also have a run-on sentence game!
Simply pick a topic, any topic, and try to write a run-on sentence about it, making the sentence as long and meaningless as you can. Here's an example to show you what I mean.
As a fan of Sir Nigel Hawthorne's portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby, I also quite enjoy run-on sentences, which - not to put too fine a point on it - might, at the end of the day, if the climate were right, produce an prima facie effect which would, after careful consideration and reviewing all applications of such somewhat arguably nebulous sentences, lead the reader to conclude that they had been merely used as a tool of confusion, obfuscation and obstruction, yet in a way which would make their content so utterly ridiculous as to be of no consequence whatever, and - in brief - mean that they never meant anything very much, one way or the other.
Does anyone want to try? *smile*
So in the spirit of linguistic fun, I thought that we could also have a run-on sentence game!
Simply pick a topic, any topic, and try to write a run-on sentence about it, making the sentence as long and meaningless as you can. Here's an example to show you what I mean. As a fan of Sir Nigel Hawthorne's portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby, I also quite enjoy run-on sentences, which - not to put too fine a point on it - might, at the end of the day, if the climate were right, produce an prima facie effect which would, after careful consideration and reviewing all applications of such somewhat arguably nebulous sentences, lead the reader to conclude that they had been merely used as a tool of confusion, obfuscation and obstruction, yet in a way which would make their content so utterly ridiculous as to be of no consequence whatever, and - in brief - mean that they never meant anything very much, one way or the other.
Does anyone want to try? *smile*