Sometimes incomplete sentences are just what's needed

George Hage taught journalism at the University of Minnesota from 1946 through 1982. Every one of his former students I've met reveres him.

Several of them sent me their memories for publication in the magazine of the Minnesota News Council, when I served as its director.

One former student, Garrison Keillor, remembered Hage this way:

"The most important thing he taught me is that when you sit down to write you are a writer, and you always aim as high as you can. He taught that every story is capable of absolute clarity, natural grace and with complete understanding."

My folder of favorite writing contains a story by the Star Tribune local columnist Jennifer Brooks. We've never met. Just call me a fan.

Some background: Minnesota once had more than 350 local newspapers, most of them family-owned.

When the Raymond-Prinsburg News closed in 2018, after 118 years as the lifeblood of its community — one of eight papers lost that year — Brooks brought to that moment her superb use of the writer's toolbox:

"We lost the Sunfish Gazette in Atwater. The Lake Elmo Leader. The Stillwater Courier. St. Paul's Asian Pages. The Arrowhead Leader in Moose Lake. The Eveleth Scene. The Range Times in Biwabik."

Look at how Brooks crafted her writing: Instead of one long sentence with a mundane laundry list of papers separated by commas, she punched out incomplete sentences, each identifying only one fallen newspaper, each nailed shut by an insistent period.

Each paper had a cherished life of its own.

One paper after another ... dead. Period.

I'd say that Brooks, in that passage, elevated craft to art. The way she used language made what she wrote look like just what the story means.

If you want readers to be affected by and remember what you have written, impact is what counts.