Hypotaxis
A prose style built out of long, subordinated sentences with layered dependent clauses.
Hypotaxis (Greek, 'arrangement under') is the syntactic style in which sentences are built from a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses arranged in a hierarchy. Its opposite is parataxis, in which clauses are placed side by side without subordination. English has both modes available; different writers, and different registers, use different mixtures.
Hypotactic prose can develop a complex thought within a single sentence, showing which parts are principal and which are qualifying. Henry James, Marcel Proust, and legal drafters are hypotactic writers par excellence — a single sentence may contain a main verb qualified by six relative clauses that together map an argument. The style is dense, controlled, and requires attentive reading.
Paratactic prose, by contrast, prefers short independent clauses joined by commas, semicolons, or 'and'. Hemingway is the canonical example. The two styles express different theories of how thought moves: hypotaxis assumes reasoning is layered; parataxis assumes it is sequential.
Skilled writers rarely stay in one mode. They use hypotaxis for analytical passages and parataxis for scenes of action, dialogue, or high emotion. A reliable revision technique: identify the three most important sentences in your draft, and ask whether each is in the correct mode for its work. Analysis usually wants hypotaxis; description usually wants parataxis.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Keep reading the glossary
A prose style built from short, coordinate clauses placed side by side without subordination.
A rhetorical figure that removes conjunctions between clauses for speed and force.
A rhetorical figure that repeats conjunctions for rhythmic accumulation and biblical weight.
A sentence that changes grammatical direction mid-course, breaking the expected syntax.