Feel the Rhythm: Sentence Length, Repetition, and Structure 

Few people know it, but language has rhythm and tempo in the same way that music does. In
fact, you are reading this sentence with a distinct rhythm and tempo in your mind right now!

To improve our understanding of rhythm and tempo, let’s dig into some of elements that
contribute to it:

Element #1: Sentence Length

Good writers constantly vary their sentence lengths in interesting ways to give their writing a
polished feel. Please read the excerpt from a Barack Obama speech and label the sentences in
terms of their lengths from 1-5, with 1 being really short, 3 being medium length, and 5 being
really long.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my 
mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who 
stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 
years old. 
 
She was born just a generation past slavery, a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the 
sky. When someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of 
the color of her skin. 
 
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America. The heartache and the 
hope. The struggle and the progress. The times we were told that we can't and the people who pressed on 
with that American creed: Yes we can. 
 
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up 
and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. 
 
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear 
itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can. 
 
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a 
generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can. 
 
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher 
from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can. 
 
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own 
science and imagination. 
 
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 
years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can 
change. 
 
Yes we can. 
 
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us 
ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century, if my daughters should be so lucky to 
live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? 

Element #2: Parallel Structure

Parallel Structure is where you repeat the same words, phrases, or sentence structure for
dramatic effect. Writers use its enjoyable rhythmic qualities to take good writing and make it
great.

Here are some examples of what parallel structure looks like:

● If we are to survive, if we are to have even the hope of surviving, we must end this arms
race.
● They went to London, to Paris, to Rome.
● It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the
age of foolishness.
● Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Look at the following excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and
highlight any moments of parallel structure:

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and 
Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy 
pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the 
stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and 
fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, 
kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro 
brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find 
your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she 
can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in 
her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority 
beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an 
unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is 
asking: ‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?’; when you take a cross county drive and 
find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel 
will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’; when 
your first name becomes ‘n-----,’ your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name 
becomes ‘John,’ and your wife and mother are never given the respected title ‘Mrs.’; when you are harried by day 
and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing 
what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a 
degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a 
time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. 
I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.” 

Element #3: Sentence Structure

A sentence can be said in dozens of different ways. Good writers purposefully seek the
sentence structures that sound the best. To be able to do that you will need to be able to
effectively wield the dreaded comma, so to help in that, I want you to write as many
grammatically correct versions of one sentence that has all of the following information as
possible. Also your sentence may only use commas and a period. No other punctuation
allowed!

● You went to the movies

● It was yesterday
● It was a matinee
● It starred Chris Pine
● It was overrated (in your opinion).

Based on our sentences, what are some rules we need to know for how we should use commas
in Standard English?