Comparing Two Extracts From Novels From Point Of View Of Language And Punctuation

‘Jane Eyre’ is a book set further back in time and the language used in it is more ‘old style’, eg. ‘And if I were in your place I should dislike her.’ In modern language we would say that morel like: ‘If I was in your place I wouldn’t like her.’ This language is used in the book ‘kes’ which is set in a more present day.

The puntuation is totally different in both of the books as well, for example in ‘Jane Eyre’ there are longer sentences, there are also more colons, semi-colons, and comers used were we might use full stops. Eg. ‘My attention was now called by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking me weather I had ever been to school before, weather I could mark, stitch, knit, etc; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue my observations on Miss Scratcherd’s movements.’ That was one of the sentences from ‘Jane Eyre’.

This is one of the longest sentences from ‘kes’: ‘He slashed the stick in front of their chests, making the air swish in its wake, then he turned around and leaned straight-armed on the mantelshelf, shaking his head. The boys winked at each other. That was one of the longest senances in ‘kes’ and its half the size of a normal one in ‘Jane Eyre’, it also used a lot less comers, and it didn’t have any colons or semi-colons in it either. The words were shorter and the sentences sounded more modern too.