in-GLISH
GRAMMAR TOOLS FOR AWESOME WRITING
Here are the 3 types of sentences:
SIMPLE SENTENCES
Subject + Predicate (Verb)
Example 1:
She was beautiful, too. (Excerpt from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt).
Example 2:
I did not speak. And then I heard his voice (Excerpt from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes).
Example 3: I have begun my own quiet war. (The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros).
COMPLEX SENTENCES
Dependent Clause + Independent Clause
Example 1:
Original: Ten years of waiting passed, several envelopes came in the mail.
Revision: After ten years of waiting, several envelopes came in the mail.
Example 2:
While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. (Excerpt from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt).
Example 3:
This student has a solid understanding of compound sentences because of how they created relationships between their ideas.
COMPOUND SENTENCES
Independent Clause + Independent Clause
Example 1:
Original: I remember everyone running around picking out their envelope from the bunch. It was as if we had just won the lottery. What was in these envelopes would set us up for life. There was a promise that came with its contents, and the nine digits that would identify us.
Revision: I remember everyone running around picking out their envelope from the bunch. It was as if we had just won the lottery, and what was in these envelopes would set us up for life. There was a promise that came with its contents, and the nine digits that would identify us. (The Marked Narrative by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 2:
The second student has a similar understanding of the same sentence structures, and has begun to experiment with complex sentences.
Example 3:
So I held him, Will Traynor ex-financial whiz kid, ex-stunt driver, sportsman, traveler, lover. (Excerpt from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes).
KEY:
Dependent Clause
Independent Clause Coordinating Conjunction
Subordinating Conjunction
Subordinating conjunctions help with sentence variety and demonstrate cause/ effect relationships.The subordinating conjunction after indicatest hat a dependent clause follows. It helps writers clairfy the order of events, whether they happened before, since, because of, if, after, and while another event.(2/16/2014)
Compound sentences are made up of two or more independent clauses connected by a coordinating conjunction. Coordinating conjunctions can combine words, clauses or phrases. Compound sentences often contain clauses that use the same subject from the main clause. In example 2, the second independent clause depends on the use of "the second student" as its subject.
In example 3, Moyes uses "so", a coordinating conjunction, and breaks the common rule of using it within compound sentences. Instead she skips the first independent clause and introduces a simple sentence. While teachers often teach students that it is improper to begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like "and", "but", or "so" it is commonly done in creative and sometimes informal academic writing.
(4/14/2014)
Simple sentences consist of a subject-predicate combination. The subject is the main noun, the predicate the main verb. All sentences need to have the subject-predicate combination to be considered full sentences. While simple sentences can create beautiful effects in a story, paper, or essay like the examples on the left, writers should aim to experiment with combining idea. (5/4/2014).