Syntax is the secret to good writing
If you want to be a better writer, learn syntax. Understanding syntax is the equivalent of being able to read music or knowing how perspective works. So much bad writing could be made better with a little syntax knowledge.
To see why syntax matters, we will start with short sentences. Look at Larry Summers' famous opening paragraph.
THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around.
The first sentence is an example of what Virginia Tufte, in her excellent book Syntax as Style, calls 'equative be sentences'. These are simple constructions where a 'be' verb (am, is, are, be etc) shows us how two things equate to each other. It acts like a hinge, so the two sides of the sentence contrast and illuminate each other.
There were other ways that sentence could have been written like, 'Idiots exist.' That lacks the emphasis required to open a refutation, which is what the rest of the paper goes on to be. Using that version was a syntax choice. And syntax turned that sentence into rhetoric.
(Before we continue with the way equative sentences work, read that second sentence of Summers: 'Look around.' It's a verb and an adverb. That's it. A wonderful example of what Tufte calls 'the versatile intransitive'. Go ahead. Try and write it better. It can't be done.)
Churchill once wrote, 'To improve is to change...', an equative be sentence with two infinitives. It would have been easy to write, 'Improvement means change', or 'You have to change to improve', or 'No one ever got any better without changing a little', or some other version. But those would have been different sentences. None of them is as definitive as Churchill's. And none would have matched his pseudo-Augustan tone, which distinguished him from most of his contemporary authors.
Equative be sentences don't have to follow such a simple pattern. Here's the Churchill sentence in full:
To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.
The second clause (after the comma) is an equative be sentence but with verb phrases, not just verbs alone. The first is made of an infinitive and an adjective, the second is an infinitive and an adverb.
Churchill starts with a simple equative be sentence and then repeats and expands that structure by repeating it with verb phrases. This is how he achieves his rhetorical effect. He repeats his syntax but adds two descriptive words. Because he knows the structure of his sentences he is able to fill them in and make them do what he wants, much in the way a mechanic knows what tools will match what components.
Here's Tolstoy doing something similar with noun phrases:
Time and patience are the strongest warriors.
The simple structure of putting two phrases on either side of a be verb, like the two sides of a see-saw, gives almost infinite possibilities for writers to create startling, declarative sentences. It's a basic pattern. If you learn how to use it, it has endless possibilities.
The crucial insight syntax offers you is knowing how to properly arrange a sentence around its main verb to create the effect you want to create. Mastering short sentences like these examples is crucial: they are the nucleus of any longer sentence you might want to write. They can also provide what Tufte calls 'syntactic relief' from longer sentences.
The basic syntax of longer sentences is about branching and perspective. The basic thing you are trying to control is the relative position of the main verb to everything else, especially the subject.
Here is an example of a left-branching sentence, where the sub-clause (everything before the comma), comes before the main sentence.
Particularly with the advent of the handheld device, digital games now seem a ubiquitous part of our culture.
Opening an article with 'Particularly' is compelling. It draws us into a specific insight. But there is something simple and logical about rewriting the sentence to be right-branching, like this:
Digital games now seem a ubiquitous part of our culture, particularly with the advent of the handheld device.
What you lose in rhetoric you gain in clarity. Neither version is objectively better, but knowing the basics of syntax gives a writer choices. Syntax can turn you from someone who puts their thought down to a writer who can them edit those thoughts into the best sentences to give the effect you want to give.
Here's an example that could be made simpler by changing the position of the subject:
I think it's far more important to write well than most people realize.
We can recast it like this to put the subject of the sentence at the start:
Writing well is far more important than most people realize.
This simplification means, as Tufte says, the sentence can now move from 'what is known to what is unknown.'
Again, neither is right or objectively better. The first example has a more conversational tone. The second is more direct.
Moving the subject to the start of the sentence puts the information in a more intuitive order. Keeping it in the middle emphasises the subjectivity of the opinion and the fact that this is practical advice, not aesthetic.
There are times where not having the subject at the front of a sentence helps to make the point more clearly, or to bring necessary tone. For example, nobody thinks that the opening to 1984, 'It was a bright cold day in April...', would be better written as, 'The April day was bright and cold...'
And I'm not advocating for all sentences to be straightforward and right-branching. Left-branching sentences can achieve a certain panache unknown to their right-branching cousins.
But even in the world of protective literary executors, Stephen Joyce’s behavior was extreme.
The opening of Metamorphosis deliberately separates the subject from the main verb to create the sense of distortion and suspense that sets the tone of the story and starts the plot off in the most uncanny way possible.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Rewriting it would ruin it:
Gregor Samsa found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin as he awoke one morning from uneasy dreams.
Read any great novel and you'll notice the writer being careful with sentence perspective in this way. The first two chapters of Howards End begin with ordinary subject-verb-object sentences. 'One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister', and 'Margaret glanced at her sister's note and pushed it over the breakfast table to her aunt.'
These two chapters provide the exposition. The facts are laid out before us. To do that, Forster needs sentences that move from the known to the unknown to create narrative drive.
In order to start establishing a plot, things need to go wrong. So the third chapter wants a sense of irony, a lightening, a transfer of perspective to the aunt. And so the syntax is changed: 'Most complacently did Mrs Munt rehearse her mission.'
And in non-fiction, simple interruptions of the normal syntax help to provide information in a clear and simple way, like in the essay on Darwin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which starts like this:
Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), naturalist, geologist, and originator of the theory of natural selection, was born on 12 February 1809 at The Mount, Shrewsbury...
This sort of trick is often used by obituary writers, who are among the best users of syntax among journalists and among the best stylists among journalists too. As Tufte says, 'syntax and style are reciprocal.'