This is the first sentence of this post. This is the second sentence. This is the title of the post, which is also found several times in the post itself. This sentence is questioning the intrinsic value of the first two sentences. This sentence is to inform you, in case you haven't already realized it, that this is a self-referential post, that is, a post containing sentences that refer to their own structure and function. This is a sentence that provides an ending to the first paragraph.
This is the first sentence of a new paragraph in a self-referential post. This sentence is introducing you to the protagonist of the post, a person named Osmo. This sentence comments on the awkward nature of the self-referential narrative form while recognizing the strange and playful detachment it affords the writer.
Introduces, in this paragraph, the device of sentence fragments. A sentence fragment. Another. Good device. Will be used more later.
This is actually the last sentence of the post but has been placed here by mistake. This is the title of this post, which is also found several times in the post itself. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself in his bed transformed into a gigantic insect. This sentence informs you that the preceding sentence is from another post (or story) entirely {a much better one, it must be noted) and has no place at all in this particular narrative. Despite the claims of the preceding sentence, this sentence feels compelled to inform you that you are actually reading "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, and that the sentence referred to by the preceding sentence is the only sentence which does indeed belong in this post. This sentence overrides the preceding sentence by informing the reader (poor, confused wretch} that this piece of literature is actually the Declaration of Independence, but that the author, in a show of extreme negligence (if not malicious sabotage), has so far failed to include even one single sentence from that stirring document, although he has condescended to use a small sentence fragment, namely, "When in the course of human events", embedded in quotation marks near the end of a sentence.
THIS sentence can serve as either the beginning of the paragraph or the end, depending on its placement. This is the title of this post, which is also found several times in the post itself. This sentence can serve as either the beginning of a paragraph or the end, depending on its placement.
This is the title of this post, which is also found several times in the post itself. This is almost the title of the post, which is found only once in the post itself. This sentence regretfully states that up to this point the self-referential mode of narrative has had a paralyzing effect on the actual progress of the post itself -- that is, these sentences have been so concerned with analyzing themselves and their role in the post that they have failed by and large to perform their function as communicators of events and ideas that one hopes coalesce into a plot, character development, etc. -- in Short, the very raisons d’être of any respectable, hardworking sentence in the midst of a piece of compelling prose fiction. This sentence in addition points out the obvious analogy between the plight of these agonizingly self-aware sentences and similarly afflicted human beings, and it points out the analogous paralyzing effects wrought by excessive and tortured self-examination.
THE purpose of this sentence [which can also serve as a paragraph} is to speculate that if the Declaration of Independence had been worded and structured as lackadaisically and incoherently as this post has been so far, there's no telling what kind of warped libertine society we'd be living in now or to what depths of decadence the inhabitants of the USA might have sunk, even to the point of deranged and debased writers constructing irritatingly cumbersome and needlessly prolix sentences that sometimes possess the questionable if not downright undesirable quality of referring to themselves and they sometimes even become run-on sentences or exhibit other signs of inexcusably sloppy grammar like unneeded superfluous redundancies that almost certainly would have insidious effects on the lifestyle and morals of our impressionable youth.
This sentence, in a sudden and courageous burst of altruism, tries to abandon the self-referential mode but fails. This sentence tries again, but the attempt is doomed from the start.
The purpose. Of this. paragraph. Is to apologize. For its gratuitous use. Of. Sentence fragments. Sorry.
The purpose of this sentence is to apologize for the pointless and silly adolescent games indulged in by the preceding paragraph, and to express regret on the part of us, the more mature sentences, that the entire tone of this post is such that it can't seem to communicate a simple, albeit sordid, scenario.
This sentence wishes to apologize for all the needless apologies found in this post {this one included], which, although placed here ostensibly for the benefit of the more vexed readers, merely delay in a maddeningly recursive. way the continuation of the by-now nearly forgotten story line.
THIS sentence is bursting at the punctuation marks with news of the dire import of self-reference as applied to sentences, a practice that could prove to be a veritable Pandora's box of potential havoc, for if a sentence can refer or allude to itself, why not a lowly subordinate clause, perhaps this very clause? Or this sentence fragment? Or three words? Two words? One?
Perhaps it is appropriate that this sentence gently and with no trace of condescension remind us that these are indeed difficult and uncertain times and that in general people just aren't nice enough to each other, and perhaps we, whether sentient human beings or sentient sentences, should just try harder. I mean, there is such a thing as free will, there has to be, and this sentence is proof of it! Neither this sentence nor you, the reader, is completely helpless in the face of all the pitiless forces at work in the universe. We should stand our ground, face facts, take Mother Nature by the throat and just try harder. By the throat. Harder. Harder, harder.
This is the title of this post, which is also found several times in the post itself.
This is the last sentence of the post. This is the last sentence of the post. This is the last sentence of the post. This is.
Sorry.
