Prose & StyleAdvanced
Periodic Sentence
A sentence delays its main clause or force until the end.
Principle
Delay creates pressure when the ending releases it.
Takeaways
- It can build suspense, ceremony, logic, or withheld judgement.
- The reader must be able to hold the sentence's parts until payoff.
- Too many periodic sentences make prose feel artificially staged.
Overview
A periodic sentence withholds its main syntactic or rhetorical completion until late in the sentence. The reader moves through conditions, modifiers, or setup before the sentence lands.
Examples
- After the bells stopped, after the guests had gone, after the last glass broke in the sink, she laughed.
- If the map was wrong, and the river had shifted, and the old road was gone, then they were already lost.