# Sentence Rhythm >When John Betjeman began a BBC radio talk with the sentence, 'We came to Looe by unimportant lanes', he must have known it sounded better than 'We drove to Looe via the minor rounds.' His version is ten syllables with the stress on each second syllable: a perfect iambic pentamater. > >(Moran, 2008 p. 7) > >- Moran, Joe. 2018. First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing ... and Life. Learning that good sentences have good rhythm feels like a dirty secret but once you learn it you cannot help but begin to see it everywhere: These are the times that try men's souls. / x / x / x / x (Paine, Thomas 1776, "The Crisis") "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times...." / x / x / x / x / x / x (Dickens, Charles 1859 "Chapter I : Recalled to Life) Grammar is a piano I play by ear ... / x / x / x / x / x (Joan Didion, "Why I write") Knowing this will not make you write well: no more than knowing musicans use rhythm would make you play beautifully. Unless you are already a skilled musician, just hearing a tune will not allow you to play it. But it might remove some of the mystery -- and that's a start.