Cumulative Sentences

This page illustrates cumulative sentences by providing examples. I feel that examples and graphics are more effective than tedious discussions.

Here are those sentences as text:

Example 1

DNA is the architectural plan of living things, whose parallel threads are cross connected with rungs of Thymine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Adenine, and then twisted. into a double-helix.

Example 2

Tuscany is drenched in color, sun colors of ochres, rust, and gold, hill towns perched on cliffs of tufa, towns that glow with slanting, golden sun at dusk.

Example 3

Boudica staggered to the bed the bed where children came into being, children meant to lead the people, one to take the crown, a crown now wrenched away, taken by usurpers come late to these green, rolling hills, hills holding the bones of their fathers and mothers.

Example 4

She returned the diamond ring from her finger to him, the two carat white stone she had coveted, the stone with one flaw, an imperfection, imperfect like his love, and his overweening need to own her soul.

Example 5

He regarded the crown jewels of the Romanovs, the jewels of paternal monarchy, a monarchy that regarded the masses as "souls," souls to be led to God for their own good, for they were unthinking, simple-minded, children.

The navigation bar button, Writing Sentences, provides useful information for writers seeking to improve their craft by the use of a number of techniques: cumulative sentences, suspensive sentences, and in the works is a plan for sentence diagrams provided in graphical form.

The research for these pages partly comes from The Teaching Company course, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft by Brooks Landon of The University of Iowa, which has a program noted for its consistency in producing noted modern writers.

I fully endorse all the products of The Teaching Company and have used them almost daily for about fifteen years.

After viewing cumulative sentences, return to the chapter on how to write a sentence.