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A periodic sentence places its emphatic main point at the end and can be long and difficult to understand until the final independent clause. It is the opposite of a free sentence, which states the main point at the beginning. Periodic sentences can create tension and release, but are not commonly used due to cultural preference for brevity. They can be built to excess, as seen in euphuism, or made into a more subtle variation by introducing part of the independent clause at the beginning.
Periodic sentence is a way to build complex sentences. Its descriptive name is in reference to the punctuation mark – full stop or full stop – that designates the end of a declarative sentence. The distinguishing feature of the periodic sentence is that its emphatic main point comes at the end.
A complex sentence typically has a main, so-called independent, clause and one or more dependent clauses or sentences. A supporting dependent clause can have its own subject noun and predicate verb, and can contain a word linking it to the independent one. It may or may not be separated by punctuation such as a comma: “The bird soared with the wind under its wings as the sun warmed the air.”
The example sentence from the previous paragraph is called a free sentence. It’s an easy-to-understand statement that states the main point, the independent clause “The bird took off,” at the beginning of the sentence. It is sometimes called a continuous style due to its linear sequence, or train of thought. The loose sentences use a literary technique called parataxis, from the Greek word for “to place side by side.” They can be thought of as the opposite of periodic sentences.
Hypotaxis means “under arrangement” and a periodic phrase uses this technique of organizing or incorporating hierarchical and unequal units of literary constructs. Such a sentence tends to be long, difficult to understand, and grammatically incomplete until finally everything is resolved with the final independent clause. The original example sentence can be rephrased as follows: “As the sun warmed the air, with the wind under its wings, the bird soared high.”
The main point of the sentence comes at the end. The sentence opens with a clause and a sentence without informing the reader who or what they are referring to. With a gradual succession of descriptions with different weights, the effective technique is one that can enrich the image, arouse curiosity or expose an argument. There is an aesthetic to poetry in this way of constructing a sentence: an emotional creation of tension and release. Partly because of this extra rhetoric, but also because of a media-influenced cultural preference for brevity, periodic sentences are not commonly encountered.
A periodic sentence can be built to excess. Popular among the English aristocracy in the late 1500s, a literary technique called euphuism used successive sentences of parallel construction: equal length, grammar, sounds, and syllables. A periodic sentence, however, can also be made into a more subtle and common but effective variation, by introducing part of the independent clause at the beginning and concluding the rest of the main point at the end. “The bird, with the wind under its wings as the sun warmed the air, soared overhead.”
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