Prose & StyleIntermediate
Cadence
The rise, fall, and felt movement of phrasing.
Principle
Cadence is how prose carries the reader's ear.
Takeaways
- It is larger than meter and subtler than sentence length.
- Cadence can create authority, intimacy, comedy, or grief.
- A weak cadence often makes good content feel inert.
Overview
Cadence is the musical movement of language through stress, pause, syntax, and phrasing. It is one of the main ways prose develops a recognisable surface.
Examples
- A sentence falls slowly into a final monosyllable.
- A comic narrator uses elaborate cadence to deliver a petty complaint.