A periodic sentence is a sentence with a stylistic device featuring syntactical subordination to a single main idea, which usually is not complete until the very end of the sentence. The periodic sentence emphasizes its main idea by placing it at the end, following all the subordinate clauses and other modifiers that support the principal idea. According to Merriam-Webster, the linguistic sense of the periodic sentence term was coined circa 1928, but there is evidence of its usage in a separate sense dating from 1766. Characteristics A periodic sentence unfolds gradually, so that the thought contained in the subject/verb group only emerges at the sentence's conclusion. It is used mostly in what in oratory is called the grand style. It is the opposite of the loose sentence, also continuous or running style, where the subject and verb are introduced at the beginning of the sentence. Periodic sentences often rely on hypotaxis, whereas running sentences are typified by parataxis. Cicero is generally considered to be the master of the periodic sentence. Decline In English literature, the decline of the periodic sentence's popularity as identifiably grand style goes hand in hand with the development toward a less formal style, which some authors date to the beginning of the Romantic period, specifically the 1798 publication of the Lyrical Ballads, and the prevalence in twentieth-century literature of spoken language over written language. In American literature, scholars note the explicit rejection by Henry David Thoreau of the formal style of his time, of which the grand style of periodic sentence was characteristic. In his journal, Thoreau criticized those sentences as the "weak and flowing periods of the politician and scholar." Rhetorical and literary usage According to William Harmon, the periodic sentence is used "to arouse interest and curiosity, to hold an idea in suspense before its final revelation." In the words of William Minto, "the effect...is to keep the mind in a state of uniform or increasing tension until the dénouement." In his Handbook to Literature, Harmon offers an early example in American literature found in Longfellow’s "Snowflakes": Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garment shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent and soft, and slow, Descends the snow. Starting with a succession of parallel adverbial phrases ("Out of the bosom," "Out of the cloud-folds," "Over the woodlands," "Over the harvest-fields"), each followed