‘Clunky’ Is in the Eye (and Ear) of the Beholder

Zach recently had the gall to suggest that Mose had posted a “clunky” sentence on this blog.

You be the judge. Here is the line in question:

Mose hears from time to time from his disciples about matters we have in common.

As you can see, Zach was probably right. Here's Zach's respectful note:

This struck me as clunky, and I was unsure about why. As a teacher, married to a teacher, I asked around and thought about it briefly. It occurred to me that what I didn't like about it was the distance of "from his disciples" from the verb "hears." Now, on your current post, you talk about misplaced modifiers.
 
Given what you state in this week's entry, wouldn't it make more sense to say, "From time to time, Mose hears from his disciples about matters we have in common”?

Also, why does that sound better to me than, "From his disciples, Mose hears from time to time ...”  Is it simple stylistic preference, or am I reacting intuitively to some grammatical convention?

Mose replied:

Zachary: Thanks for the thoughtful note.

All the constructions – yours and mine – are grammatically OK, but we read things differently. “Clunky” is a good way to describe how readers sometimes hear writing, and writers do need to write for the ear as well as the eye, as Jack Kilpatrick used to say.

I suspect the “clunkiness” you find with my original sentence stems from that prepositional double – “from time to time from his disciples.” Your fix, with the time element in the dependent clause to start the sentence, works for me. The New Yorker, on the other hand, might have set off “from time to time” with commas, to de-emphasize its importance in the sentence. And The New Yorker loves to use commas.

Stylistic preferences aside, I firmly believe every editor needs an editor. Thanks for giving my work a thoughtful review.

Questions, comments and criticism of Mose's work are (almost) always appreciated. Every editor does, indeed, need an editor.

Mose himself often uses the word “clunky” to describe language that, while syntactically sound, does not fall trippingly off the tongue – to use another Kilpatrickism.