Periodic+Sentences

==In order to craft a periodic sentence, you must delay the verb until the last clause. You may delay the entire independent clause (subject and verb) if you so choose, but the verb must be withheld for it to be periodic. Another name for a periodic sentence is a climactic sentence because you build toward the main idea or climax of the sentence.==

//E//xample: At midnight last night, on the road from Las Vegas to Death Valley Junction, a car hit a shoulder and turned over. --Joan Didion, "On Morality
==If you place the subject and verb at the beginning and add a string of phrases at the end, you have a loose sentence. Another name for a loose sentence is a cumulative sentence because more information accumulates leading up to the period.==

//Example: A car hit a shoulder and turned over at midnight last night on the road from Las Vegas to Death Valley Junction.//
==The reason to use a periodic sentence is to shift the emphasis in the sentence and to create rising action toward the verb. The use of long phrases and/or clauses, if you use more than one, also creates a rhythmic effect.==

Examples of Periodic Sentences from Literature
> “Out of the bosom of the Air, > Out of the cloud-folds of her garment shaken, > Over the woodlands brown and bare, > Over the harvest-fields forsaken, > Silent and soft, and slow, > Descends the snow.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Snowflakes
 * "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson in //Self-Reliance//
 * "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul." - Frank Herbert in //Dune//
 * "Halfway between West Egg and New York City sprawls a desolate plain, a gray valley where New York's ashes are dumped" - Scott Fitzgerald in //The Great Gatsby//
 * “Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved -- to write a book.” - Edward Gibbon in //Memoirs of My Life//