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Asyndeton is a writing style where conjunctions are omitted in a series of words, phrases or clauses. It is used to shorten a sentence and focus on its meaning. For example, Julius Caesar leaving out the word “and” between the sentences “I came. I saw. I conquered” asserts the strength of his victory.

Asyndeton in Literature

• Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was thick, warm, heavy, sluggish. – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods – Her Kind by Anne Sexton
• He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac. – On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Joona walks through the Christmas market in Bollnäs Square. Fires are burning, horses are snorting, chestnuts are roasting. Children race through a stone maze, others drink hot chocolate. The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
• It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. The Werewolf by Angela Carter
• Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. – Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Why, they’ve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poisons, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. – Double Indemnityby James M. Cain
• Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, brief, poor lives. – The Werewolf by Angela Carter
• In some ways, he was this town at its best–strong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful. – A Tribute by Mike Royko

Asyndeton in Speeches

• “There’s no nation in the history of the world and no city that has seen more immigrants in less time than America. And people continue to come here in large, large numbers to seek freedom, opportunity, decency, civility.” – Rudy Giuliani
• “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “…that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” – John F. Kennedy
• “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,” – Winston Churchill
• “The union’s survival, its very existence, sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us, the poorest among us.” – Cesar Chavez
• “I speak here as a politician and also as a Catholic — a layperson baptized and raised in the pre-Vatican II Church, educated in Catholic schools, attached to the Church first by birth, then by choice, now by love.” – Mario Cuomo
• “Now as an engineer, a planner, a businessman, I see clearly the value to our nation of a strong system of free enterprise based on increased productivity and adequate wages.” – Jimmy Carter
• “There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death.” – Toni Morrison
• “Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.” –  General Douglas MacArthur

Asyndeton can be an effective tool when writing to create a more concise, dramatic effect. It can be used to quicken the pace or emphasize a point.