The Longest Sentence

[slack]

Simple. Write the longest, most grammatically correct sentence you can think of, using any technique at your disposal -- em dash, parentheses, etc. Only one sentence, please.

In addition, post word count so we can all bask in your awesomeness.

 

[J Riff]

Fearmont opened the dictionary and began reading aloud- Aardvark, Aabacus, ...

 

[Culhwch]

J Riff made a fairly paltry attempt at creating the longest sentence for this little challenge, topping out his word count - if its brevity even justifies the use of that term - at a measly ten words; obviously, though his intention was that his list of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives (and their like) cribbed straight from the dictionary would stretch his sentence to great lengths, his sheer laziness has undone him, as his substituion of a well-placed ellipsis, meant to represent all of those aforementioned words, has drawn his sentence to a premature close.

Ninety-four words, though I'm not entirely sure it's grammatically correct.

 

[J Riff]

The sheer effrontery put forth by such a predictable and over-verbose example, however erudite, of this sort of thing, is exactly what one would expect to unearth whilst digging desultorily through the backwaters of cyber rumination that now exist in a world that has, admit it, grown a little, just a tad too educated for its own good, and therefore by simple corollary, any any all adjoining worlds, galaxies, dimensions or special realities too vague to even be defined except poorly like this, using mere words as a feeble sceptre of ludicrosity raised in vain against a cold, I mean really very very sub-arctic cold, universe that doesn't seem to give a hoot, have been irrevocably gibbled.

 

[Ursa major]

By removing the full stops and replacing each "And" with "and"**, one can turn chapter one of Book One of Genesis (King James Bible version) into one sentence of 797 words.

The first 179 words are as follows:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, Let there be light: and there was light and God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night and the evening and the morning were the first day and God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters and God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so and God called the firmament Heaven and the evening and the morning were the second day and God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so...

** - So much for not starting sentences with a conjunction....

 

[Peter Graham]

The oft-observed tendency of some people (and I make no particular criticism of those posters who have, to date, preceded me in this interesting and engaging test of our writing skills/powers of expression/ability to rabbit on and on apparently ad infinitum (or, if not ad infinitum, at least long enough to make most passing readers wish to put their own eyes out with hot irons rather than get to the end of any of our deliberately overblown and overwritten sentences)) to conflate "long sentences" with "long words", may, unfortunately, lead to some folk running out of steam as they realise that they have fashioned a figurative rod for their own backs by making this challenge as much about word power as breathlessness, thereby leaving them with little option (in fact, one might safely say, with simply no other option whatsoever to speak of) other than to end up emulating the narrative voice of that great Dubliner and man of letters, James Joyce, who in his groundbreaking novel, Ulysses, (which, as those of you who have read it and/or seen Stephen Fry going on about it on the telly the other week will know, is a fictional work concerning the life in a day of kidney-gobbling loner, Leopold Bloom, as he discovers that the adventures of brave Odysseus (not least the famous incident with the Sirens in which Bloom (in the film version at least) catches a crafty glimpse or two up the skirt of a particularly decorative colleen on the beach at Blackrock or some such other place near the Dun Laoghaire - pronounced Dunlairy or Dunleary -ferry terminal on Dublin Bay) are recreated in microcosm on a daily basis on the streets of the Irish capital, thereby proving that the old adage "all life is here" (the provenance of which I cannot for the moment recall which might mean it was another bon mot issuing from the goose quill of bald-headed beardie and all round good egg, old Billy Shakespeare, the bard of Stratford and one time husband of Anne Hathaway (she of cottage fame)) really is true - or, at least, really is true if you happen to live in the capital city of the southern, or Republic, bit of the partitioned island of Ireland and have a mind to go out looking for these things) amazed his audience with his ability to make each sentence last for a chapter or more, thus prompting my pal, Dave Ten Pints (of whose escapades and propensity for copious quantities of strong liquor I have spoken of on various occasions) to utter the immortal line - "I only ever read the first sentence of Ulysses but unfortunately it took until page 77 for the bloody thing to actually finish" - before downing his tenth pint, accidentally soiling himself and having to be helped home by self, Mrs Graham and Rancid John the Rat Man.




I make that 483 words and claim my ten points.



Regards,


Peter