There have been several claims for the 'longest sentence in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

' revolving around the longest printed sentence. Sentences can be made arbitrarily long in various ways. One method is successive iterations, such as "Someone thinks that someone thinks that someone thinks that someone thinks that...," or by combining shorter

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...

s. Sentences can also be extended by recursively embedding clauses one into another, such as :"The mouse ran away." :"The mouse that the cat hit ran away." :... This also highlights the difference between linguistic performance and linguistic competence, because the language can support more variation than can reasonably be created or recorded. As a result, one

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

textbook concludes that, in theory, "there is no longest English sentence."

Exceptionally long sentences in print

* '' An Accommodating Advertisement and an Awkward Accident'', the 427-word winning entry in '' Tit-Bits'' Magazine's Christmas 1884 competition for "the longest sensible sentence, every word of which begins with the same letter". *Molly Bloom's soliloquy in the

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

novel ''

Ulysses Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature. Ulysses may also refer to: People * Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name Places in the United States * Ulysses, Kansas * Ulysse ...

'' (1922) contains a sentence of 3,687 words *

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...

's '' Absalom, Absalom!'' (1936) contains a sentence composed of 1,288 words (in the 1951 Random House version) *

Jonathan Coe Jonathan Coe (; born 19 August 1961) is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, '' What a ...

's 2001 novel '' The Rotters' Club'' has a sentence with 13,955 words It was inspired by

Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal (; 28 March 1914 – 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, often named among the best Czech writers of the 20th century. Early life Hrabal was born in Židenice (suburb of Brno) on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province ...

's ''

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age ''Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age'' ( cs, Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) is a 1964 novel by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. It tells the story of a man who recounts various events from his past, and in particular his love lif ...

'': a

Czech language Czech (; Czech ), historically also Bohemian (; ''lingua Bohemica'' in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Re ...

novel written in one long sentence. * '' Solar Bones'' by Mike McCormack is written as one sentence It won the 2016 Goldsmith's prize for experimental fiction, was longlisted for the Booker in 2017 and won the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. *'' Ducks, Newburyport'' by

Lucy Ellmann Lucy Ellmann (born 18 October 1956) is an American-born British novelist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Biography Her first book, '' Sweet Desserts'', won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She is the daughter of the American biographer and literary cr ...

, a finalist for the 2019

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...

, runs more than a thousand pages, mostly consisting of a single sentence that is 426,100 words long * ''This Book Is the Longest Sentence Ever Written and Then Published'' (2020), by humor writer Dave Cowen, consists of one sentence that runs for 111,111 words, and is a stream of consciousness memoir

References

{{reflist English grammar Sentence Sentence Literature records

Exceptionally long sentences in print

See also

References