Adapted from the opening three paragraphs of George Orwell's essay "A Hanging" (in our Essay Sampler: Models of Good Writing, Part One), this combining exercise invites you to experiment with a variety of sentence structures.

As you work on this exercise, keep in mind the advice offered in our Introduction to Sentence Combining:

• Remember that no one particular sentence structure is automatically superior to another.

• Try to vary the length and structure of sentences to convey ideas clearly, concisely, logically, and smoothly.
• Avoid repeating any one structure too frequently.

Combine the sentences in each set below into a single clear sentence, and arrange your sentences (sets 1-6, 7-14, and 15-19) into three coherent paragraphs. After you have completed the exercise, compare your paragraphs with Orwell's original text on page two. Keep in mind that many combinations are possible, and in some cases you may prefer your own sentences to the original versions.

A Hanging

1. It was in Burma, a morning of the rains.
   The morning was sodden.
2. A sickly light was slanting over the walls into the jail yard.
   The light was like yellow tinfoil.
   The walls were high.
3. We were waiting outside the condemned cells.
   The cells were a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages.
4. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten.
   Each cell was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water.
5. In some of them men were squatting at the inner bars.
   The men were brown.
   The men were silent.
   The men were squatting with their blankets draped round them.

1. These were the condemned men.
   They were due to be hanged within the next week or two.
2. One prisoner had been brought out of his cell.
3. He was a Hindu.
   He was a puny wisp of a man.
   He was a man with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes.
4. He had a moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films.
   The moustache was thick.
   The moustache was sprouting.
5. Six Indian warders were guarding him.
   The warders were tall.
   The warders were getting him ready for the gallows.
6. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets.
   The others handcuffed him.
   The others passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts.
   The others lashed his arms tight to his sides.
7. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him, as though all the while feeling him.
   Their hands were always on him in a careful, caressing grip.
   They were feeling him to make sure that he was there.
8. It was like men handling a fish.
   The fish is still alive and may jump back into the water.
9. But he stood quite unresisting.
   He yielded his arms limply to the ropes.
   It was as though he hardly noticed what was happening.
10. Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, thin in the air, floated from the barracks.
    The bugle call was desolately thin.
    The air was wet.
    The barracks were distant.
11. The superintendent of the jail raised his head at the sound.
    The superintendent was standing apart from the rest of us.
    The superintendent was moodily prodding the gravel with his stick.
12. He was an army doctor.
    He had a grey toothbrush moustache.
    He had a gruff voice.
13. "For God's sake hurry up, Francis," he said irritably.
14. "The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?"

After you have completed the exercise, compare your paragraphs with Orwell's original text on page two.

Related Exercise:
Reading Quiz: "A Hanging," by George Orwell