25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way

Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Neil Armstrong, Jack Kerouac, Yoda: these are just a handful of the writers and speakers whose words are parsed in this diverting romp through sentences culled from poems, essays, speeches, songs, fiction and film.

In chapters titled for distinctive features, such as “U-turn” and “impossibility,” master teacher Geraldine Woods deftly reveals the underlying craft that goes into the creation of a memorable sentence. Literature lovers will be delighted to discover new authors and revisit favorite passages from a fresh perspective. And writers who want to stretch their skills by following the prompts in each chapter may well find themselves feeling as Henry James did when he wrote, “I have many irons on the fire, and am bursting with writableness.”

This is a must-read book for any resister of grammar-bound, sentence-diagramming analysis who wants to understand the art that lifts a sentence from good to great.

“"Using hundreds of examples from writers as diverse as Bruce Springsteen and Virginia Woolf, Geraldine Woods articulates the precise ways in which a writer can send a sentence spinning."”

"Woods is engaging and entertaining, a self-described ‘language enthusiast’, and her dry wit lifts both the book and the reader’s spirits... [her] knowledge of literature and other sources and her expertise in writing are demonstrated wonderfully by the additional sentences she provides to continue exploring the structure, style and word choice of the featured sentences." -- Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading

Geraldine Woods has taught every level of English from fifth grade through Advanced Placement at both St. Jean Baptiste High School and The Horace Mann School in New York City. She is the author of more than fifty books, including Independent Study That Works: Designing a Successful Program, Sentence.: A Period to Period Guide to Building Better Readers and Writers, and 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way. She is also the creator of the Grammarian in the City blog, which explores a variety of topics related to language, grammar, and writing. She lives in New York City.

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