From Joan Didion:
Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of
school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is
its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the
meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position
of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people
know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The
arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be
found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement.
The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without
clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or
short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words
and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going
on in the picture. Nota bene.
It tells you.
You don't tell it.
