Syntax and tone in The Economist
For a man widely regarded as a cross between Machiavelli and Rasputin, Dominic Cummings has lost a lot of battles lately. The prime minister’s special adviser opposed both Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5g networks and the hs2 rail network (which he labelled “a disaster zone”). Boris Johnson has given the green light to the first and is shortly expected to approve the second. Mr Cummings’s plan to cut the size of the cabinet and create a super-department of business has been ditched. So have his schemes to turn Downing Street into a nasa-style mission-control centre and to ship Conservative Party headquarters to the north of the country.
This paragraph opens with an excellent left-branching sentence. Without that branching, the joke would have been lost. It also establishes the half-admiring, half-superior tone the rest of the article benefits from.
The rest of the paragraph uses subject-verb-object sentence structures that reinforce the point like a succession of battering rams. Although these sentences have plenty of ornament, it is all factual and hangs off the logical, straightforward structure of the sentences like fruit from espaliered trees.
As well as left-branching sentences, The Economist is adept at that essential syntactical manoeuvre, the switch to a short sentence or sentence fragment:
Despite Mr Cummings’s recent setbacks, the war against the blob is advancing on several fronts. Take the BBC. The government is holding a public consultation into the case for decriminalising the non-payment of television licences, through which the bbc is funded. Or the senior judiciary. Furious at the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision against Mr Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament last year, some leading Conservatives are thinking of using the opportunity of a constitutional review, announced in the manifesto, to abolish the Supreme Court and return its functions to the House of Lords.
The final sentence is mid-branching, with the main verb nestled so tightly among the sub-clauses and parenthetical explanations you almost miss it, despite keeping hold of the basic meaning, a bit like the whole row over the Supreme Court.
The ability to control a long sentence like that, the first fifteen words of which add colour and context but could be removed without losing the sense, is a sign of a professional writer, albeit one who is over fond of the present continuous tense. But it is equally indicative of the journalist's skill that they know when and how to switch to shorter sentences, as with this ending:
The combative Mr Cummings may pick too many fights for his own good. He might get edged out of Downing Street, or just flounce out. But if that happens, the blob should not kid itself that it has won, for it has other, more dangerous enemies.
The last sentence here could be broken up into two. It wasn't, because that would sound too much like a Steven King parody.
These simple syntax decisions are part of what makes The Economist well-written and well-read. As I said before, syntax is the secret to good writing.