Free Grammar Help
What is a sentence?
A sentence is a complete and independant statement. The main parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate. Usually the subject is the name of something taking action and the predicate all the rest including the object. The object is the thing which the subject acts upon. It may also contain some subclauses and other stuff, but the most important thing if you are having trouble with your writing is to keep it simple. Don't put in too much stuff in your sentences.
Sentence Types
Sentences may be simple (subject-verb) or compound (subject-verb-conjunction-subject-verb). Sentences may also be complex (subject-verb-subordinate clause). And, for mind-boggling difficulty, sentences may be compound-complex. Let's see some examples.
Sentence Type
|
Example
|
| Simple |
The boy jumped. |
| Compound |
The boy jumped and the girl ran. |
| Complex |
The boy jumped, avoiding the car. |
| Compound-Complex |
The boy jumped, avoiding the car and the girl ran to her mother to ask for help. |
A simple sentence simply has a subject and verb. The verb may or may not require an object.
A compound sentence has two related actions joined by a conjunction.
A complex sentence has a subordinate clause.
A compound-complex sentence has all of the above: two related actions joined by a conjunction as well as one or more subordinate clauses.
Terms
Subject: Noun taking the action in the sentence.
Object: Noun being acted upon in the sentence.
Put it all together and you have a sentence:
"Joe threw the bone."
"New York City grows buildings."
"The subject noun verbs the object noun."
Exception: the passive sentence.
In the passive sentence the subject is not explicitly stated or the subject comes last.
"The bone was thrown." or "The bone was thrown by Joe."
Avoid passive sentences except in scientific writing where the writer pretends they had nothing to do with the experiment except for reporting on it.
"Chemical A was mixed with chemical B." NOT "We mixed chemical A with chemical B."
Predicate is the object and other stuff: Joe threw the bone, which had once belonged to a Tyrannosauraus rex in the later Jurassic era and had resided in his left hind leg.
Here the object is still "bone" but the predicate includes all the junk about the bone. This sentence is already a little longer than it should be. If you add on any more stuff to this sentence you are running into dangerous territory: The Run-On Sentence. Example: Joe threw the bone, which had once belonged to a Tyrannosauraus rex in the later Jurassic era and had resided in his left hind leg where it attached to a lateral abductor muscle before his demise when it had sunk with his body into a shallow sea and gradually fossilized by a leaching of carbonate atoms through the eternal presence of water molecules filled with solute ions.
This is not a sentence, it is an adventure in reading! Run-on sentences are one of the most common grammatical faults. They generally come about when you have a lot to say or you don't have a clear idea of what you want to say. These sentences should just be broken down into several complete sentences. They are easily corrected during the proofreading phase of your writing.
Sentence Faults
This brings us to the common sentence faults. The two most common faults are:
- Run on sentences. As above, trying to pack too much into your sentence. This is easy to do when you are writing and the ideas are flowing. That's one reason why you always need to take time to carefully proofread and edit your work.
- Sentence fragments. This is when the sentence lacks some essential element, usually the subject or verb. The most common sentence fragment occurs when the subject is a phrase which includes a verb, but there's actually no main verb in the sentence.
Run-on Sentences
Run-on sentences can be caused by a few errors. The above example of a run-on sentence could actually be fixed and turned into a long compound-complex sentence with the correct application of punctation. It's not recommended. Many run-on sentences are much shorter.
Fused sentences are when two parts of the sentence are joined together without benefit of punctuation: "Joe ordered pizza his pizza was cold."
Comma splices are when the write used a comma to join two parts that are not supposed to be joined. For example: "Joe ordered pizza, his pizza was cold." Here are two halves of a sentence that are connected, but not grammatically. We can fix a comma splice in a couple of ways.
- Make it two complete sentences with a period and a capital letter. "Joe ordered pizza. His pizza was cold."
- Connect it with a semicolon: "Joe ordered pizza; his pizza was cold." This is called "parallel structure."
- Connect the two halves with the comma and a joining word (conjunction: "Joe ordered pizza, but his pizza was cold." This makes the second part of the sentence subordinate to the first part. It is called a "subordinate clause."
- Use a semicolon and a conjunctive adverb: "Joe ordered pizza; however, his pizza was cold."
Clear writing
If you are having trouble with your writing, start by making sure your sentences contain a subject, verb and object. Don't make your sentences too complicated. Go through your writing one sentence at a time and make sure each sentence is grammatically correct. Pay particular attention to the possibility of a fused sentence or a comma splice as described above.
|
