Stanley Fish’s little treatise How to Write a Sentence is an enjoyable read—maybe not the rigor that one would expect, given the instructional title—and it had several nice nuggets of insight.
One of those is the rough distinction between “subordinating style” and “additive style” sentences.
As Fish frames it, the subordinating style “orders its components in relationships of causality (one event or state is caused by another), temporality (events and states are prior or subsequent to one another), and precedence (events and states are arranged in hierarchies of importance).”
In other words, the subordinating style is a highly logical construction, clear about how the sentence elements relate to one another.
In contrast, Fish sets out the additive style (which he also refers to as the coordinating style). He doesn’t define this one as clearly, which makes sense, given its looseness. He defines the additive style as an approach in contrast to the subordinating style:
But suppose you wanted to achieve another effect, the effect not of planning, order, and control, but of spontaneity, haphazardness, and chance. Then you might avail yourself of another style, no less artful, but marked by the appearance of artlessness.
While the additive style might appear to be random and unformed, Fish does a fine job plucking out examples (such as the style of J.D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye) where the additive style is not merely random clauses and phrases collated without intent. (Though it appears that way at first.)
Taylor Coe 