The+Sentence

//At some point, no matter what level you are teaching, the matter of craft at the sentence level shows up. One way to approach the issue of craft is deductively, laying out general principles and working down from there. But it's also possible, and I think, for students, a lot more interesting, to work inductively, starting with specific, noteworthy examples and working upward toward whatever generalizations seem to be in order. These four sentences are chosen exactly at random, but neither are they chosen out of any inner necessity. You could substitute whatever examples you might want.//

1. The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. (Shirley Jackson)

2. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel and the scratcher, the seeds, and the knife she worked with. (John Steinbeck)

3. Upon the west to their right the land was treeless also, but it was flat, and in many places green with wide plains of grass. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

4. It has been argued that classical laws are indeterminate because they are abstract and so can become determinate premises for the deduction of determinate events only if sets of positive and negative conditions are fulfilled. (Bernard J. F. Lonergan)