<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # Sentence autonomy is not identical to quotability.... > Sentence autonomy is not identical to quotability. I test every sentence for semantic autonomy: the reader should be able to identify what it is doing, what it acts upon, and how it contributes without repairing an abandoned thought. That does not mean every sentence should become a quotation, because connective prose, evidence, qualification, narrative, and rhythm are indispensable. A marked sentence faces the higher test of surviving the destruction of its surroundings. The purpose of the quotation test is not to turn an article into a stack of posters. It is to prevent consequential thoughts from borrowing the appearance of completeness from a paragraph that is doing their thinking for them. **Source:** [[projects/The Argument in Miniature - How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose|The Argument in Miniature: How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Sentence autonomy is not identical to quotability. I test every sentence for semantic autonomy: the reader should be able to identify what it is doing, what it acts upon, and how it contributes without repairing an abandoned thought. That does not mean every sentence should become a quotation, because connective prose, evidence, qualification, narrative, and rhythm are indispensable. A marked sentence faces the higher test of surviving the destruction of its surroundings. The purpose of the quotation test is not to turn an article into a stack of posters. It is to prevent consequential thoughts from borrowing the appearance of completeness from a paragraph that is doing their thinking for them.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-sentence-autonomy-identical-paragraph-doing-thinking ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->