Shakira Sison

Nota Bene

“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 of 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 being photographed. Many
people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about
sentences. The arrangement of words matters, and the arrangement you
want can be found in the picture in you 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 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.”

-Joan Didion