In this book I’m reading The Last Full Measure, the author Jeff Shaara seems to go out of his way to avoid using small connecting words in his writing. The result is choppy run-on sentences like the following:
“Lee looked down, did not want to think of his son that way; saw the beaming face, the huge young man, always a bright smile.”
Now, if I were to write the above, I would write, “Lee looked down, for he did not want to think of his son that way. He saw the beaming face of the huge young man who always wore a bright smile.”
To my way of thinking, conjunctions and small connecting words make for a smoother read. The author’s style, and I understand he’s rather well regarded in historical literature, is a style that I find jagged and irritating after a while.
I would just shrug it off as one author’s idiosyncratic tic, but I just finished another book by a Pulitzer Prize winner called Katherine Boo called Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and she was doing the same thing. And it was just as annoying.
I’m guessing that a lot of Dopers are going to argue that I’ve got an old-fashioned tin ear in reading, and that the new hip way to write is exactly as people talk, with all the choppy phrases and jammed up ideas exactly as they spill out, even for omniscient narrators.
It’s just a stylistic thing. You like it or you don’t. I find it somewhat obnoxious, but I quickly forget about it. That said, I also don’t like the “for he did not” construction you suggested. I’d just drop the “for” there.
I think “as” comes off better. “For” as a conjunction often comes off stilted to me.
I do agree, however, that you could have no conjunction–as long as you make it a new sentence and add a pronoun. That links it back to the previous sentence well enough.
It’s just so fragmented and full of grammar errors. That can be used well for effect, but it’s a lousy general style. This sentence, if I can even call it that, comes off like a list of fragmented ideas that have not actually settled into a coherent thought.
If I were writing it, it would look something like this:
“Lee looked down. He did not want to think of his son that way. In his mind, he saw the beaming face of a huge young man, always with a bright smile.”
At no point did I include a conjunction, but it still seems far more connected and coherent–all without changing the order in which it is conveyed.
Sure, if this was some guy who was having trouble thinking straight, and portrayed as how his thoughts worked, it would make sense. For example: “Cold. Wet. Covered in dirt. John shook as he slowly picked himself up off the ground. He needed to be more careful as he walked around.” (Apologies–I’m not a writer. I have more of an editor mindset. But I hope you get the idea.)
I got reamed for using ‘since’ in the suggested manner in a college paper because ‘since’ is supposed to refer to the passage of time. The instructor insisted on ‘because’. Again, too clinical for my taste.
I believe you mean: “I don’t care, and it still sucks.”
Alternatively: “I don’t care, yet it still sucks.”
Conceivably: “I don’t care, for it still sucks.”
In the mornings, when I am usually wide awake I love to take a walk through the gardens and down by the lake where I often see a duck and a drake and I wonder as I walk by just what they’d say if they could speak although I know that’s an absurd thought.
That’s pretty much what my ear says. Honestly, I don’t really like “as” or “since” that much either. I think a full stop between the two thoughts gives the proper pacing, but, like I said, it’s a stylistic choice. At any rate, “for” just sounds stilted and archaic, as you said, to me.
I considered that, but I find periods more natural in the pleasure reading context. “Lee looked down” seems to short for a sentence style that uses semicolons, to me. YMMV.
It’s also why I chose a comma where I could have used a dash in my rewrite attempt. Dashes feel weird in that context–even though I use them all the time here (as part of my “style.”)
