you see it in nature where differences are eloquently displayed jane brown had no gender or sex only those who can get over themselves are her friends and when she and harold dick got married the children they had were displaying the same traits it oh she married a man named john dick now I ask the question if there is no capitol at the beginning and no punctuation at the end how can it be a sentence this is a prank to see if i can toy with you gwen brown had fun
no sentence structure or punctuation
A word from our sponsor:
Comments
I can imagine...
... a gargantuanly long run-on sentence filling out an entire short story.
-- Daphne Xu
extremely long sentences
In my „day job“ as translator, I have had the „pleasure“ of having to translate contracts written by a notary public to either German or English from so-called Spanish. (Keep in mind that both notaries and lawyers purport to write Spanish, but in reality they use a completely foreign language where word often mean the opposite to what the common language meaning is.) And the notaries in Paraguay are notorious for not leaving any white space at the end of lines. So I have had the dubious pleasure of encountering sentences that spanned more than one page of text more often than I care to remember. At 70 lines of 70 characters each per page, you can do the math. The longest I can remember was almost two pages long. It was a huge giant grizzly of a bear to interpret the original and break it down into its components before I could even make a start at any kind of translation that would even come close to conveying the concept and meaning of the original.
Neat little experiment in punctuationless prose
I like it anyway, and I'm glad you had fun Gwen.
I thought I remembered reading somewhere about a whole NOVEL that was all one long sentence. So I googled it, and it turns out there have been several. I've read some of these authors but not these works. They seem like the usual suspects for pushing the boundaries of prose; although I'm surprised that Italo Calvino never gave it a shot. I'm just glad they did it so I don't have to. All the following is from a site called TIMES NOW; It's late & I'm too tired to paraphrase; if they complain I'll take this down...
~hugs, Ronni.
,
The Last Wolf by László Krasznahorkai
Krasznahorkai is a master of long, flowing prose, and in 'The Last Wolf', he pushes the boundaries of narrative style. This novella is composed of a single, winding sentence that spans the entire book. The story follows a philosopher who is tasked with recounting the extinction of the last wolf in a small Spanish town. His thoughts, ramblings, and existential musings blend into one another, creating a seamless and hypnotic flow of words. As with many of Krasznahorkai’s works, the lack of punctuation makes for a dense and challenging read, but it also immerses readers fully in the character’s mind and emotions. This continuous stream of consciousness feels almost like being pulled into a dream, where time and structure lose meaning.
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, famous for his magical realism, wrote 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' in a series of long sentences, some of which span entire chapters. The novel tells the story of a dictator’s final days, weaving a surreal and nightmarish tale of power, isolation, and decay. The long sentences, filled with dense imagery and metaphors, create a sense of entrapment that mirrors the dictator’s psychological state. The lack of full stops gives the novel a breathless, suffocating feeling, immersing readers in the chaotic mind of the protagonist. García Márquez’s prose is lush and poetic, making this a challenging yet rewarding read for those who can navigate the labyrinthine structure.
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
'Solar Bones', which won the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, tells the story of Marcus Conway, an Irish engineer reflecting on his life and the world around him. What sets this novel apart is that it is written in a single sentence, creating a stream-of-consciousness narrative that mirrors Marcus’s wandering thoughts. The absence of full stops and traditional structure gives the novel an uninterrupted, almost meditative flow, making readers feel like they are listening to Marcus think in real time. The novel touches on themes of life, death, family, and the passage of time, all while maintaining an unbroken rhythm. It’s a masterclass in style and storytelling, proving that a novel can be both experimental and deeply emotional.
The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende
In 'The Infinite Plan', Isabel Allende tells the story of a boy named Alexander, who navigates the complexities of life through a single, continuous sentence that spans the narrative. The novel explores themes of family, identity, and the pursuit of happiness, all while reflecting on the passage of time. Allende's prose flows effortlessly, drawing readers into Alexander's journey from childhood to adulthood, filled with dreams, challenges, and discoveries. The lack of traditional punctuation enhances the immersive experience, allowing readers to feel as though they are part of Alexander's unfolding life. Through this experimental style, Allende masterfully captures the essence of human experience, making The Infinite Plan a captivating read that resonates with readers on multiple levels.
Zone by Mathias Énard
'Zone' is a sprawling novel set over the course of a single train journey, written entirely as one long sentence. The protagonist, a former intelligence agent, is traveling from Milan to Rome, reflecting on his past experiences in war-torn regions of the Middle East and Europe. The novel weaves together memories, historical events, and personal trauma, creating a dense and multi-layered narrative. The single-sentence structure mirrors the protagonist’s unrelenting stream of consciousness, as his thoughts shift between past and present, fact and fiction. The lack of punctuation gives the novel a frenetic, almost breathless quality, perfectly capturing the inner turmoil of the protagonist as he grapples with his past. Despite its challenging form, Zone is a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of violence, memory, and the human condition.
Some people leave a mark on this world while others leave a stain
~Eleanor Roosevelt
.
Languages that do not use punctuation.
I am not sure, but I think that Asian pictorial languages do it that way and some are right to left.
Gwen Brown
Context and word order
Most classic Asian languages (i.e. before the advent of European cultural exchange) eschewed punctuation, relying on context and word order. Chinese, Japanese, Korean. South Asian languages such as Sanskrit, Thai and Burmese use Scriptio Continua, in which writing consists of one long, continuous sentence.
Japanese uses a particle at the end of a sentence (ka) to denote a question. In speech, of course, the listener would know it's a question by the falling tone of the voice.
Sammy
Oh no! Too late ...
A lot of excellent candidates here for https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ contest ... which is now archive-only.
The contest was to write a really bad opening line to an (I hope imaginary) even more wretched novel.
And paragraph indents and
Blank lines are also punctuation.
For the indent, I used four 'ampersand'nbsp;. and for the two blank lines it used on a new line, 'less-than'br>, then 'ampersand'nbsp; and finally another 'less-than'br>.
---
On older story sites, I've seen the dreaded "wall of text'. I bail out.
"Hey! Authors! If you want me to read your stuff - make it easy for me to read."
And before you say "My writing, my rules." - Uhm, no. I'm the Reader, and I have way more power than you do. *closes tab*
Sins of formatting
Ever since I learned to use WordPerfect 5.0 all the way back in 1989, I learned to separate function from form. In a nutshell, do not use the content as formatting. This was a radical departure from the mechanical typewriter and the early character-based word processors.
Those early writing aids were based on mono-spaced characters sized at 10 characters per [horizontal] inch for 80 characters per line for letter sized paper. With some matrix printers you could also get compressed characters at 12 characters per inch for 96 characters per line.
In those „good old days“ of mechanical typewriters and edge-perforated tractor fed printers with mono-spaced characters it was common practice to use common spaces for indentations or table alignment. This practice became a serious problem when users started switching to graphical user interfaces and proportional fonts such as Macintosh and Windows 3.0. Even into the 2010s I have come across extremely frustrated users who could not get their indents and tables to line up properly with spaces. In spite of the proper formatting tools being available as far back as WordPerfect 4.2 in the late 1980s.
A concept I learned with WordPerfect 5.0 in 1989, and that I have used extensively with MS-Word as well as OpenOffice and LibreOffice, is format styles. You define a style with all the relevant formatting, and then apply that style to your text. Then if you latter decide to modify the formatting of your text, you just modify the style without having to search through your whole document for each individual occurrence. For example, instead of the chapter headings being centered in continuous text, you want the chapter headings to be left aligned at the top of the page, you just modify the chapter heading style to insert a page break before the paragraph and the text left-aligned without any indents. Et voilà, all your chapter headings (that you marked with that style) will now conform to your new formatting.
This separation of form from function (or content from presentation) is available in most current text processors, and is the basis of efficient workflow in typesetters such as PageMaker, MS-Publisher or Scribus. And it is the foundational principle behind virtually all text mark-up systems. In academia, and especially STEM, but also in professional publishing, the gold standard has become TeX and its extensions LaTeX, ConTeX and XeLaTeX, where the author just concentrates on the content and merely marks certain functions in his text. The presentation or formatting of that content is handled by a totally separate part of the whole system depending on the output target (editing draft, book or magazine).
In digital publication HTML/CSS handles the same separation of content and formatting for a consistent presentation across all different applications and devices, as well as user preferences and/or needs. The current standard is for HTML to apply to the function or content of the document, while CSS applies to the form, presentation or formatting of the document. It does not matter if you are using a 3-inch mobile device screen or a 50-inch wall mounted screen, with [the proper] CSS your HTML document will be equally consistent and well presented.
In my opinion, one of the biggest benefits of publishing a document as ePub instead of PDF or paper, is that a single version will be able to accommodate virtually all user needs. There is no need to publish a separate „Large Print“ edition. Each user can choose his own preferred font size and the text re-flows correctly within the confines of the reading device. Or the user can select a custom color scheme to accommodate his/her contrast needs. Do you need black on white, or is white on black a better option for your needs or your environment. In a brightly lit environment black text on a white background is often the easiest to read. But in a dark environment withe text on a black background might very well cause a lot less eye strain and fatigue. Or it might very well be a different color combination or scheme. All this is handled via the CSS and with standardized keywords.
You mention the dreaded wall of text that often appears on older stories or story sites. In my experience, the indiscriminate use of
< >and<br>is a big contributor to that problem. Both of these codes have the legitimate use case. But they should not be used to force a certain formatting or presentation! By default<p>Paragraph text</p>will add spacing above and below, and usually also indent the first line.A big sinner is currently FictionMania. To this day, the moderators still insert a ton of
<br>codes to manually break the lines at around 70 characters per line. Which utterly breaks the automatic text re-flow on smaller or narrower screens or windows, to the point of being almost unreadable. At the very least, it is hugely distracting and makes following pure dialog very difficult.In LibreOffice Writer, hitting the
F11key opens a sidebar to the style browser. Here you can select styles to apply to your text. But you can also define new custom styles and modify all existing styles.