Surely I should be able to clearly articulate what good design means to me? I design every day, I review the work of other people, confidently giving an opinion on what works, what doesn’t, and why. What became clear to me, and the person asking me the question, was that I had no idea how to articulate this. I cringed as I struggled to string a few vague words together in a poor attempt at an answer. As a professional designer, you might think this is a simple question with a straightforward answer, right? Polysyndeton and asyndeton maintain the elements of transition or connection, and are grammatically functional techniques.ĭo you like to use polysyndeton or asyndeton in your writing? Let us know in the comments.An attempt to deconstruct what ‘good’ meansĪ few years ago someone asked me the simple question of how I define good design. A run-on sentence has no conjunctions or commas to indicate transition of ideas or phrases, but barrels on as if it were two sentences that should be properly separated by a period. It is important to note that polysyndeton and asyndeton are not necessarily indicative of a run-on sentence. Asyndeton is what would result if you replaced all the conjunctions in the sample sentence above with commas, as in the famous Julius Caesar quote, “Veni, vidi, vici.” Polysyndeton has an opposite, called asyndeton (something Joe is very fond of using). Melville is constantly carried away by polysyndeton, which adds to the gravity of his prose. There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher. Example from Herman Melville's Moby Dick: Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so-but still they admired her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl, and one whom they would not object to know more of.Īusten uses polysyndeton frequently to convey a sense of enthusiasm and breathlessness. Example from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: Twain was a big fan of polysyndeton and the first pages of Huckleberry Finn are littered with fun but unnecessary conjunctions. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. Example from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: … Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.Ī bit gross, but you get the idea. Example from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: It can also be used to intentionally overwhelm the reader, giving them very little room for mentally or visually breathing with the lack of commas.īelow are a few more examples now that you know what to look for. It is often used to change the rhythm of the text, to make it either faster or slower, and it can convey a sense of gravity or excitement. and, but, or) are used repeatedly in quick succession, often with no commas or other punctation, even when the conjunctions could be removed. Polysyndeton is a literary device in which conjunctions (e.g. Let's get started! What Is Polysyndeton? Polysyndeton Definition Well, there's a term for that! It's called polysyndeton, and in this post, you're going to learn exactly what polysyndeton, as well as the corresponding technique of asyndeton, and how and when to use them both in your writing. You know how sometimes you're reading a book and a writer will use a really long sentence without commas or periods and they're just going and going and you kind of run out of breath just by reading it but it's also kind of nice if you're into that sort of thing?
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