THE MUSIC OF LANGUAGE

THE RHYTHM OF SENTENCES: MAKING IT “SING”

Words can make magic. Skillfully put together into sentences, words can transfer ideas and images from a writer’s mind into the minds of readers—that, by itself, is powerful verbal magic. When we exploit the musical characteristics of language, we can make another kind of magic with our words: Through their sounds and rhythms, our words can “sing” to readers and move them in the way music does.

In the previous article we looked at how repeating and varying the elements of sentences can let us make rhythm and create various effects. Now let’s look at creating verbal music from a different perspective: how to “make words sing.” (Naturally, the sounds and durations of words contribute a great deal to their “singing”—but that’s a subject for another day.) To explore “singing on the page,” we return to word groups.

When we talk about word groups, we are talking about words that make sense together. Usually what we