On LiveJournal, my friend Karl (Macnaughton, whom I led here but who doesn't post much) and I have just been having an impromtu long-sentence-writing competition. Karl insisted my attempt was void because of the phrase in parentheses (in bold below). I was taught - and thus replied - that exclamation and question marks can be used in the middle of a sentence, and that although they're generally used at the end of a sentence, their presence doesn't in and of itself indicate that the end of a sentence has been reached. Bill (mutualdesire, who also seldom posts here, lol) added that "Sub-sentences are not sentences per se, merely additional phrases within the main sentence. This applies only if the subsentences are within parentheses."

Who is correct? Here's the sentence:

"Oh dear, you’ve awoken my rather competitive nature now, which isn’t always the best thing to do (as again, anyone who knows me will no doubt verify), but here goes anyway: I see that you do indeed have a point that I would never embarrass myself by attempting to write an extremely long sentence and getting all the grammar etc wrong, or perhaps even merely engaging in it for its own sake; you, however, have no such qualms and are happy to indulge in a little competitive lengthy-sentence-writing using merely commas (something for which I commend you; it is indeed an act of bravery, and one which I would not dare to entertain, using instead, as I do, my inferior tools of colons, semi-colons, dashes and parentheses in addition to said commas); however, not generally being one for always doing what is expected (BOO! did I scare you?), I shall in fact attempt to write an even longer sentence than that which you previously so eloquently scribed – if for nothing else to provide my weary brain with some much-needed exercise (it just took me three attempts to spell ‘exercise’, for goodness’ sake): so here it is."

I'd call that one sentence.

Yay! I win! *does lap of honour round the room*

I am equivocal. Exclamation marks are definitely within the sentence in cases like:

Alas! that ever I saw the day.
My only Mary! whom I shall ever treasure.
Boo! and hiss! to all such false traitors.

(As you can tell, I feel they have a rather old-novely flavour.) Now the exclamation mark after your 'BOO' certainly doesn't cut the main sentence in two, but I don't think the parenthesis itself is clearly of the above type (as, after all, you can write pretty much anything in a parenthesis. You can even start a new sentence. This presents typographical problems, because we tend to feel it doesn't quite fit with the familiar conventions.), so it might be that the word count of your sentence should exclude that of the independent one wholly inside it.

You have a point. I don't mind either way, as even without those five words my sentence was vastly longer than the preceding one, lol.

I'd call it one sentence, too, though of course it could also be broken up.

Sounds like a game we could play!

I recall that there is a record for longest sentence. I heard something about the editor of a newspaper, maybe the Chicago Tribune, who told the story of a car crash very lengthily, all in one sentence. Of course, this is silly, since I can always add to sentence S, "Kalleh said S".