What is a sentence?
- Is a group of carefully chosen words that represent a complete thought.
- Contains a complete subject and a complete predicate
Complete subject is the person, place, thing or idea that the sentence is about and all the words that go with it.
Complete predicate is the verb, the action that goes with the subject.
- Begins with a capital letter.
- Ends with one of three punctuation marks – . ? or !
- Makes complete sense.
Four kinds of sentences
- Declarative e.g. “You have a bug on your head.”
- Interrogative e.g. “What did you say?”
- Exclamatory e.g. “You have a bug on your head!”
- Imperative e.g. “Please speak louder.”
Clauses AND Simple, Compound, and complex sentences
Clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb. If it makes complete sense and can stand alone it is a sentence by itself and is called a main or independent clause or simple sentence.
We wrote a letter.
A subordinate or dependent clause cannot stand alone; it needs another clause to make a whole sentence.
and it was a good one.
Simple Sentence is made up of one main clause.
Compound Sentence is two or more main clauses.
We wrote a letter and we sent it to the President.
Complex Sentence combines an independent or main clause with a dependent clause.
We wrote a letter and it was a good one.
Problems!
- Word Order – usually the complete subject comes before the complete predicate; sometimes, for variety, the predicate can come first.
- Adjectives come before nouns; adverbs can come before or after a verb. Use articles (a, an, the) correctly.
- Fragments – parts of a sentence are missing.
- Run-On Sentences – main clauses in a compound sentence must be connected by a comma PLUS a conjunctiSentence Sense Basics
on or by a semicolon.
To improve your sentences read aloud while revising or editing.
