The style of a sentence is the way its words represent and organize underlying propositions. . There are thoughts both stated and implied in propositions that underlie its structure and syntax.

Assignment: Choose a long, complicated sentence. Identify the base clause and count the number of modifiers attached to it.

Examines key terms concerning sentences like: effectiveness and elegance, and grammar and rhetoric comparing and contrasting each. The concern of grammar in this course is only to the point that it helps with expression, the focus being on how sentences work rather than how to label each part.

Assignment: Pick an opening sentence from a newspaper or magazine and rewrite it in a completely different style.

Introduces a number of assumptions upon which the entire course rests. Explores the vertical ladder of abstraction, how the same words in different order have different meanings, that the way sentences convey information adds to or changes the information, and that there’s no difference between style and content.

Assignment: Provide sentences of varying lengths that give you pleasure.