“The way they leaned and bent, the manner in which they were clustered, and the fact that they had no windows at all, was very disturbing to the prisoner; and he bitterly mourned the folly which had made him sip the curious wine of that merchant with the humped turban.”
In this passage our hero, a Randolph Carter, a New Englander, has been kidnapped by evil Arabs under command of evil gods (classic Lovecraft) and has just arrived at their city on the dark side of the moon (also classic Lovecraft). But I believe this sentence demonstrates both periodic and running styles juxtaposed against one another.
The first half is an example of periodic style: it elaborates deeply on its subject and its circumstances before concluding the grammar with a subject compliment. The second half is an example of running style in which you receive grammatical gratification at “mourned” and the rest is added on to its end. As you can see, length isn't an issue, and neither are dependant clauses and phrases, but where these lie in the sentence.
Through this example, it seems that there is a polarity of speed in this as well as many of the other terms. The periodic is slower and spends all those words describing one object. The running style appears to be quicker, having mourning, wine-sipping and merchants with humped turbans all in the same amount of space.
Thank you for more elaboration! While I feel much more confident with these terms than others having your expansion on the concept.
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