Multiple registers can be present in the same sentence. For instance, writing that is transparent is also often concrete; abstract writing may also be figural. |
This simple sentence is transparent, while at the same time being abstract. Everyone knows that "eating out" means eating at a restaurant (in this case, "Smashburger," a restaurant chain that readers may or may not know of first hand), and everyone knows what a "son" is. So while it is easy to see what the sentence points to, the reader relies on abstract generalities to see what the sentence indicates. | |
| My rhetorical question here is a bit wordy. I could have written it more simply, more transparently: "Why is it so easy to eat dangerously?" As it stands, the use of isocolon (is it--that--it is, where "that" serves as a colon that is placed like a mirror between equivalent pairs of words) and antimetabole (the A B/ B A pattern-- "is it: it is") work together to pose an obstacle for the reader, slowing down the delivery, in essence, making the sentence hard to digest. I'm trying to make the sentence DO (figurally) what I am talking about transparently. |
This next tweet is a compound-elaborated sentence, where "eager lemmings" elaborate the "thick line." The sentence is also a complex figurative sentence (not to be confused with "figural"). The second phrase works as an extended appositive (renaming something) that renames what is hidden by "thick line." In both cases I have reduced the actual human beings present in the scene into a geometric object in the first instance, and in the second, an animal whose famous behavior (of mindlessly jumping over a cliff) is actually a fictionalized account (lemmings have been disnified). | My aim was to capture the inevitable, irresistible rush (I should have used "rushing" instead of "leaping") into danger, that I myself participated in. But since "I" am missing from the statement, I have given myself a privileged position over those depersonalized fools. Also, something personal is at stake here: I found out last November that I have high cholesterol, and so since then I have been avoiding pork and beef. The salad I ordered had bacon bits in it... |
| One problem I have with this figurative sentence (written in the additive style-compound with punctuation) is that I misspelled gluttonous (greedy): glutinous means "like glue." However, because agency is shifted to the bundle of green leaves, rather than the eater, zeal that sticks still makes some sense. |
| I tried several figures here: beginning with an inversion, the sentence becomes complex with the dependent clause "beaming," and then anticipation with the follow up of what the son says, which anticipated followup is a virtual sentence. I really enjoyed setting the rhythm with four syllables, four syllables, three syllables, and then ending with one, "smash," which could be read as a verb, a noun (the restaurant), or an adjective, or all three together. |