Not only is that sentence awfully long, its worst crime is that nothing happens. It was a dark and stormy night the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. The worst opening linesīen Blatt quotes the opening line of the book “Paul Clifford” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton as one of the most ridiculed opening lines ever: Then, make sure they want to read your second sentence. First, get people to read your first sentence-a short sentence works better because it’s easy to read. Salinger’s 63-word mammoth sentence, take your cue from Toni Morrison, the master of short first sentences, like this one from “Tar Baby:”Įach of these sentences makes you curious to read on. Who has the patience to start reading a block of text? Examples of short opening sentences They’re hurrying across the web, searching for interesting articles to read and share. They’re not curled up on a comfy sofa with a book and a glass of Rioja. Our literary heroes may write lengthy first sentences.īut when writing for the web, we need to remember our readers. The first sentence is only as popular as the rest of the book, and brevity alone will not make a first sentence great. His conclusions are not clear cut, as he summarizes in his book “Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve:” This famous opening line is 63 words long.īen Blatt analyzed what makes a good novel great, and he also reviewed first sentences. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. This is how “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. That first sentence creates drama because it instantly raises two compelling questions in readers’ minds: Why did the brother die? And why was the author not sorry? A reader reads on because he wants to find out the answers to these two questions.Īn opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. This is how the novel “Nervous Conditions” by Tsitsi Dangarembga starts: Okay? What makes an opening sentence good? But first, let’s define what a good opening line is. Let me share with you a trick for writing a first sentence super-fast. We have other things to do than worrying about one line of text. In an interview with the Atlantic, Stephen King admits he can spend months, or even years, on writing the opening lines for a new book.Īs business writers, we don’t have the luxury of time. The task of writing a catchy first sentence can paralyze even the most acclaimed writers. What if I fail to engage readers? What if I’m boring them? What if I’ve wasted my time on this article because my first line sucks? I don’t like the pressure of writing a first sentence. Let’s say you skip reading the first few sentences and start with the fourth?
#How to introduce a quote from a textbook how to
Be careful not to alter the meaning of the quotation by adding or removing too many words.This article discusses how to write an opening sentence:Ī shortcut for writing a catchy first sentenceĬan I skip the opening sentence for this post? To insert your own words into the quotation to ensure it makes grammatical sense in your work, write your words in to distinguish them from the author's. Inserting your own words into a Quotation but it also comes into the study of tort because there are some cases where parties who have suffered as a result of public nuisance can sue in tort. Private nuisance is a common law tort and the main subject of this chapter. There are actually three types of nuisance: private, public and statutory. Leave a space between an ellipsis and any text or punctuation, except quotation marks.Įlliott and Quinn explain the different types of nuisance in tort: If text is removed from a quotation for reasons of clarity and length or if it ends mid-sentence in the original text, use an ellipsis (.) to indicate that some of the original text is missing. Websites & Social Media Toggle Dropdown.European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cases.