Comparing Jane Eyre (An old style story) to Kes (A new style story)
Uploaded by Admin on Nov 23, 2000
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.