Patent lawyers are a strange breed. While forced to write patent claims with spotless grammar and diction to clearly convey [split infinitive] the meaning – no more, no less – than what they claim the invention to be, they must load up all the content of the claim (much as I have done here) in a single sentence. For an example of a 175-word sentence comprising a single claim in an issued patent, roll over this note.
Purple prose has its own literary tradition, venerated in the annual Bulwer-Lytton writing contest. Inspired by the writings of the author of the famous, opening but wordy "It was a dark and stormy night" sentence, contestants write the "worst" first sentence of "fictitious" fiction, such as:
"The countdown had stalled at T minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably--the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career."
"Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears."
"Lightning flashed from the blue-black sky of this alien world and shattered the engines of the spaceship, destroying Reninger's last chance of escaping and reminding him of the time his sister returned from New York with the tips of her hair dyed blue, except for the part about the lightning and the spaceship."
"I'd stumbled onto solving my first murder case, having found myself the only eyewitness, yet no matter how frantically I pleaded with John Law that the perp was right in front of them and the very dame they'd been grilling - the sultry but devious Miss Kitwinkle, who played the grieving patsy the way a concert pianist player plays a piano - the cops just kept smiling and stuffing crackers in my beak."
"A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona's ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea."
For more fun, go to http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm and to http://www.bulwer-lytton.com.
But, I digest. My point, and I do have one, is that animal references are the key to successful humor...No. That's not it. My point is, the one-sentence wonders that we call patent claims—just like these funny yet bad first sentences which start out on a long, tortuous (yet seemingly familiar) imagery trail, only at the end to dive sharply (for indeed, who can "dive languidly") into unexpected and unexplored brush – have the deepest impact when they describe one thing: A surprising result.