04
The Verbal Litter of Sentence Fragments
When we talk, why don’t we finish our sentences? Linguists must know the answer to this question, but I am at a loss. All I’m sure of is this: lawyers find it difficult, and often impossible, to finish sentences. They have some kind of built-in resistance to committing to a period. Commas, elipses, and random question marks—yes. Periods, no.
Here’s what I mean. A lawyer stands up to make an opening statement, or a motion to a judge, or a presentation about a case to colleagues. She states her topic or theme, often (but far from always) in a single sentence. And then, she’s off to The Land of the Never-Ending Sentence. There isn’t a period to be heard for minutes on end:
“Mrs. X has been afraid for her life since the night her husband stabbed her with a kitchen knife.” (This is the complete sentence.) “Mr. X had threatened her on numerous occasions, and the police had been uh called to their residence more than once and in 2009 alone officers were called by uh by either a neighbor or the caretaker of the condos or even by Mr. X himself uh on one occasion, and so she has been scared and worried, especially for the um effect of the potential violence on her two young daughters, who she sent away to live with her um sister………” And so on, and on, and on.
The story eventually emerges from a thicket of verbiage. Participles dangle, prepositional phrases attach themselves, as if by their own accord, to the beginnings of ideas or the ends of a long-winded thought, serving only as a bridge to the next part of an excruciating, endless sentence. Tangled in the verbal weed patch, like chattering language cicadas, is the cognitive wheel-spinning of habitual rephrasing, as in:
“…who she sent away to live with her sister… who..uh…who she sent to a suburb of Boston…who she sent early um last year to live in a safer place…a less a much less violent situation with her sister, because she was now uh even worried about a different type of uh abuse, verbal, physical her older daughter reported….”
We seem to be constantly editing, hitting the delete button, starting over, revising, rough drafting out loud. We would never leave a written sentence unfinished. Why don’t we speak with the same care?
There is a fix for hanging fragmentitis. If you hear yourself starting sentences over, you can help yourself bring sentences to an end by doing three things.
First, resist tacking “and” onto the ends of your thoughts. Do this with all your intellectual muscle. Speak in phrases, working your way through sentences with precision. This keeps your brain in sync with your mouth. We often listen to lawyers who speak so fast that they cannot monitor their speech in real time. Their brain is way out ahead of their lips. As my Uncle Bobby Wayne once observed of a talking head on TV, “I see he’s mashing his lips together, but I can’t make out a word he’s sayin’—and I’m sure he don’t know, either.” “And,” used in this fashion, litters your speech with meaningless noise.
Second, end sentences with downward inflection, walking down the musical steps of each sentence. End sentences decisively, so listeners hear that the end is approaching. They need those inflective, musical cues to help organize your thoughts in their heads. If you are asking a rhetorical question, end with the upward inflection of curiosity. Walk your voice up the musical steps.
Lastly, pause briefly when your sentence ends. You should hear silence. Silence which follows the downward inflection of an audible period gives listeners a moment to process what you have said. Silence gives you a moment to formulate the first word of the next sentence. Don’t worry that the pause will be too long. 99.9% of the time, these pauses are less than a second, and still sufficient to let listeners know the sentence is over. Resist the urge to rush into the next sentence.
Speaking in deliberate phrases keeps your sentences on track, and prevents you from excessive starts and stops. Trust that you can speak about your topic with articulate intelligence. You needn’t second-guess yourself, and make listeners endure your public editing. Sentence fragments wouldn’t do on paper. Don’t sprinkle them throughout your spoken presentations.
Don’t be a litterbug. Period.
Do you have any ideas about how to speak in complete, articulate sentences? Let me hear from you.
