Parataxis
A prose style built from short, coordinate clauses placed side by side without subordination.
Parataxis (Greek, 'arrangement beside') is the syntactic style in which clauses are placed alongside one another, joined by commas, semicolons, or coordinating conjunctions ('and', 'but'), without the layered subordination of hypotaxis. 'I came, I saw, I conquered.' 'He arrived at noon. The sky was clear. Nobody was waiting.'
Paratactic prose feels direct and physical. Because no clause is grammatically subordinate to another, every clause carries equal weight, and the reader is not told which fact is the argument's centre. The effect can be documentary (Hemingway), biblical (the Book of Genesis, in the King James), or oral (folk tales in almost every language).
Parataxis is not simply the absence of skill; it is a choice with its own history. Homer is paratactic. So is much of Anglo-Saxon prose. Modernist writers — Stein, Hemingway, Beckett — deliberately revived the style as a rejection of what they saw as the over-managed Victorian sentence.
The characteristic risks of parataxis are monotony and thinness. Without subordination, the writer must earn variety through choice of verb, rhythm, and image rather than through grammatical texture. A good rule when editing paratactic prose: if three consecutive sentences have the same length, cut or fuse one.
“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.”
Keep reading the glossary
A prose style built out of long, subordinated sentences with layered dependent clauses.
A rhetorical figure that removes conjunctions between clauses for speed and force.
A rhetorical figure that repeats conjunctions for rhythmic accumulation and biblical weight.
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.