One perfect sentence | Odile Sullivan-Tarazi

It’s the final sentence, and it’s just right

When writing, we typically spin our wheels on beginnings, and beginnings are indeed important. Beginnings are what set the scene, what establish theme, what begin to lay out for the reader just what kind of piece this is and where we’re going with it. Beginnings are the springboards, to be sure. But endings deliver the payoff. The ends of sentences, the ends of paragraphs, the ends of essays, articles, books — all are positions for delivering a thought with particular emphasis and impact.

At the end of an essay on Dido Elizabeth Belle, the real-life inspiration behind the recent movie Belle, comes this sentence —

It seems Dido Belle, for all the obscurity of her later life, is in 2014 something of an icon.

It is the final sentence of the final paragraph, the most emphatic position of any work, most particularly a short piece, which derives its power too from compression.

The very last sentence of a piece, this final moment — the thought the author chooses to close on, perhaps a tidy summation and wrap-up, perhaps commentary of some sort, perhaps instead thought/action/decision/discussion arrested and left unresolved (very French) — is the bridge, for us the readers, between the world of the essay or article or book and the world outside that work. With what sense do we turn now from the interior world of the words on the page, and that experience, back to the outside world? What echoes of that writing might we carry with us into our day? Of course, the substance of the whole contributes to the momentum, provides the backdrop, but it’s the final thought of the piece that’s the springboard. It’s the final thought that looks both back over the piece and forward to the leaving of it. It’s the final thought that often colors for us our reaction to the whole.

Here are the last two paragraphs of this essay, which set the immediate context for the final sentence (the complete context is, of course, the full essay) —

There’s one last question worth thinking about. “I wondered if Dido herself ever saw the painting,” says Davies. “I was intrigued by what she might have thought of it. But I’ve been told it wasn’t shown at Kenwood during her lifetime.”

Perhaps she would have liked it. Others certainly do. At the Scone Palace gift shop, alongside reproductions of the double portrait, you can buy cropped images showing Dido, alone and smiling. It’s an image that’s been printed on to pocket mirrors, key rings, and magnetic notepads. It seems Dido Belle, for all the obscurity of her later life, is in 2014 something of an icon.

Now that you’ve a better sense of how the sentence is situated, how the buildup to it works, let’s take a closer look at that final sentence, the one that both paragraph and essay conclude with. Perhaps the best way to appreciate its construction, and the specific impacts of that construction, is to begin with the core sentence and to look at the successive layering of technique.

But first, we should say something more about this business of the ends of sentences.

End focus

In the simplest and plainest sort of structure, a sentence in English opens with the subject and is followed by the predicate. This is the familiar subject-verb-object (SVO), subject-verb-complement (SVC), or subject-verb (SV) order. The different patterns have to do with what sort of verb is involved, and whether it takes an object (transitive verb), a complement (linking verb), or is complete unto itself (intransitive verb).

Whichever type of verb, this is your basic, garden-variety type of sentence. You might think of this as the default.

In such a sentence, the natural point of focus is in the predicate, generally towards the end of the sentence. This is where, in English, our simplest, most basic sentences naturally tend — this structure, this emphasis — which is why English sentences are said to have end focus.

Of course, there are techniques for refocusing that point of emphasis elsewhere in the sentence, and techniques too for heightening the tension of the natural endpoint. Such techniques typically involve restructuring that simple SVO, SVC, or SV pattern, adding to it, elongating it, complicating it. It is in working with the great variety of structure available to us, working with the positionality of English itself, that we get the richly different sets of literary voices English has to offer. Few sentences follow that simple core pattern unfettered. And rightly so, as that would make for dull reading.

The layering of effect in this sentence

At the heart of the sentence we’re exploring more closely is this core statement —

Dido Belle is something of an icon.

This is the simple subject, the verb, and the subject complement (here, a predicate nominative) that sits nestled within the longer version, like this —

It seems Dido Belle, for all the obscurity of her later life, is in 2014 something of an icon.

The emphasis in this core sentence, when it stands on its own, is on the phrase something of an icon, with the most emphatic point being icon. This is also the news the sentence offers us: it’s the point the sentence wants to drive home. It’s the point of the sentence.

If you read this sentence aloud —

Dido Belle is something of an icon.

you will find yourself naturally putting more stress towards the end of the sentence, most firmly on that last word.

And that’s because everything in this core sentence, this simple SVC structure, is in its “home” position: the subject in its most usual and unremarkable position, likewise the verb, likewise the complement. These home positions are the unmarked positions for these elements, meaning they receive no additional emphasis or highlight. In this pattern, the subject is typically not the focus. The predicate is.

Some of the techniques that alter and complicate a core structure do so by moving words and phrases from this unmarked position to positions of greater focus. Or by introducing other changes that bring about such moves.

Adverb of time between verb and complement

Adding in the timeframe to the core sentence yields this —

Dido Belle is in 2014 something of an icon.

And here’s the first point of deliberately heightened emphasis. Time information is adverbial, and adverbs are fluidly mobile within sentences. The phrase in 2014 could have appeared in many different positions in this sentence, including at the very start as a transitional element. That’s a standard position for adverbs of time, not only because they then set the context for what’s to come but also because it’s often best to get that more incidental information out of the way early, clearing the path for the other, more important, bits of info to be conveyed in positions of greater natural emphasis.

But here, contrary to that usual approach, the author has chosen to use that short phrase of time to suspend us, just for a moment, before delivering the end. It’s a delay tactic, and that small delay adds weight to the already highlighted point, something of an icon. Because the date has been itself placed in a “marked” (that is, unusual) position, it too is given more emphasis than it would have otherwise received. And in the final version of the sentence, that’s an emphasis that makes good sense, as the framing of this sentence will in the final version be then contrasted with now.

midSentence interrupter between subject and verb

Adding in the lengthy interrupting phrase, the one set off by commas, to our expanding sentence yields this —

Dido Belle, for all the obscurity of her later life, is in 2014 something of an icon.

This interrupter, for all the obscurity of her later life, is another adverbial phrase, this time modifying the entire sentence. As an adverb, it too is very mobile. As a sentence modifier, it might well have introduced the sentence. Instead, placed as it is, it again suspends us for a time — delaying us not only from reaching the end of the sentence, but also from reaching the verb. A deliberate and arresting move.

At the same time, because this phrase is also placed in an unusual position, it calls attention to itself. And though we do not add commas in a sentence everywhere we might take a breath, the converse is true: where we do add them, we also add a beat. Thus, commas change the rhythm of the phrasing as well, moduating and enriching that rhythm and also throwing just a bit of emphasis onto what precedes them, in this case both Dido Belle and later life.

Like this —

The added emphasis on Dido Belle stresses what would otherwise be completely unmarked, the subject in the subject position, which serves then to highlight that subject. The added emphasis on later life places us in time and highlights that time, which will in a moment be contrasted with our own. And there’s a hiccup of emphasis at obscurity which has to do with both the length of the word and its meaning, a subject for another day.

Although both adverbials, the short phrase of time and this longer sentence modifier, are of the sort that typically introduce the sentence — and either might have done so here — for this sentence to achieve the effect that it does, the effect that comes from two different patterns now of delay, they must not. These two patterns of delay shift and modulate the emphasis of what would have been a very different sentence had those two adverbials been in their more standard introductory positions.

anticipatory it

In the final layering of effect, an effect built on top of those two shifted adverbials, the sentence is structured with what’s known as an anticipatory it, or it-shift.

This is a technique for shifting entire clauses or phrases towards the right — often structures that would be too ungainly in the lefthand subject position — so as to deliver them more smoothly. It can also be used as a technique for shifting emphasis to that subject phrase, by moving it from its unmarked, or home, position to a position of natural emphasis following the verb. In fact, this shift of emphasis will always be a natural effect of the move.

To take one simple example, this is perfectly correct —

To lie is wrong.
S V C

But this is the smoother and more natural version of that thought —

It is wrong to lie.
[it as placeholder to anticipate the subject] + V + C + actual subject

This version also casts more emphasis on the phrase to lie (the subject) than the version without the shift does.

Likewise, although this is grammatically correct —

That you were delayed is unfortunate.
S V C

it is not typical of how we’d array the information.

We would more naturally say —

It is unfortunate that you were delayed.
[it as placeholder to anticipate the subject] + V + C + actual subject

Not only is this structure smoother, it also shifts the emphasis to what would have otherwise been the unmarked subject clause.

The expression it seems that (whether that appears or is elided) employs this technique of shifting information to the right, towards the predicate position, in the sentence. In this framing, everything that follows the explicit or implicit that is considered, grammatically, to be the full subject phrase, in apposition to the opening it that fills the subject slot. The sole function of it in this construction is to shift information into a more useful slot in the sentence, whether that be for clarity or emphasis. Or both.

This particular expression is one of a small set (it seems that, it appears that, it looks like, and other such phrases) for which there is no complement. These “hedging” statements have the effect also of softening the information conveyed, either for practical or, as here, for purely stylistic effects.

But you don’t need to know all that to appreciate the effect of this final structural layer: more emphasis on Dido Belle than if it had been the unmarked subject (and that’s in addition to the emphasis added by the placement of that comma following the name) and yet more delay of the sentence endpoint, which means — when such delay is handled well — more dramatic tension.

And that brings us to the final form of the sentence (with the core sentence here called out) —

It seems [that] Dido Belle, for all the obscurity of her later life, is in 2014 something of an icon.

At each step along the way, with each choice, the author has worked to tighten expression and to heighten dramatic tension. The end result is a sentence with a rich musicality, a lovely rippling of varied emphases, playing across it. And an endpoint that has been accentuated with a series of carefully crafted suspensions and delays.

The end result

Nearly any sentence we write could be expressed in various ways. The longer the sentence, the more constituent parts, the more choice we have in how best to array those parts.

How else might this sentence have been phrased?

It’s possible to play around with the parts and to come up with several variations. Of those possibilities, perhaps the best, perhaps also the most representative of how this sentence might typically have been written, is this —

In 2014, for all the obscurity of her later life, Dido Belle is something of an icon.

There is nothing wrong with this sentence. It even ends on a relatively strong note. But it is nowhere near as delightful as the version that actually appears in the essay. Each of the techniques employed — the somewhat surprising placement of the year, the lengthy interrupting sentence modifier and its placement, the use of the anticipatory it — serves to heighten suspense, which further sharpens the impact of that final phrase, and that very last word, when it arrives.

And that’s good writing.