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Sentence Structure

SENTENCES

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24 views

Sentence Structure

SENTENCES

Uploaded by

James Bond
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sentence structure grammar rules

Aside from knowing the parts of a sentence, you also have to follow the grammar
rules. In case you forget, here’s a quick list:

Capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence.


End a sentence with a period, question mark, exclamation point, or quotation marks.
Most of the time, the subject of the sentence comes first, the verb comes second,
and the objects come last. (Subject -> Verb -> Object)
If the subject is singular, the verb must also be singular. If the subject is
plural, the verb must be plural. This is known as subject-verb agreement.
Types of clauses
If every sentence were as simple as subject + verb + object, books would be so
boring! That’s why English has developed a few different sentence structures to
keep things interesting and give us more options for speaking and writing.

Before we get into those different sentence structures, it’s crucial to understand
how clauses work. A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb.
Sometimes a clause is a complete sentence on its own, but other times it needs help
before it expresses a complete thought.

A clause that is a complete sentence is called an independent clause. It contains


everything you need for a complete sentence: subjects and verbs, with objects
optional.

We’ll eat dinner at five.

Faria and Bertuccio assisted the Count of Monte Cristo.

A clause that is not a complete sentence is called a dependent clause, or


subordinate clause. These support independent clauses, usually by adding necessary
information.

The roads are icy because it rained last night.

This sentence contains two clauses: (1) The roads are icy and (2) because it rained
last night. Each sentence has a subject (the roads & it) and a verb (are & rained),
but only the first clause is a complete sentence by itself.

Notice that the subordinate clause because it rained last night slightly changes
the meaning of the first sentence by adding new and important information. That’s
the main purpose of subordinate clauses—to improve an independent clause with
essential details.

Although subordinate clauses have both subjects and verbs, they cannot exist on
their own. They contain special words called subordinating conjunctions, which
connect them to independent clauses.

Common subordinating conjunctions include because, since, although, unless, and


while, as well as relative pronouns like that, which, whatever, whenever, whoever,
etc.

If you see a subordinating conjunction, it means that group of words is a


subordinate clause. It helps to memorize them so you can easily identify different
clauses. You can find a complete list of subordinating conjunctions here.

4 types of sentence structure


Depending on how you combine clauses, you can create four different types of
sentence structure:
Simple: 1 independent clause
Compound: 2 or more independent clauses
Complex:1 independent clause + 1 or more subordinate clauses
Compound-Complex: 2 or more independent clauses + 1 or more subordinate clauses
Note: Sentences are also categorized by their function, i.e., declarative,
interrogative, exclamation, and imperative. These are separate from the types of
sentence structure (complex, compound, etc.), and the two categories can be mixed
and matched. To read more about each, check out our guide on the types of
sentences.

Let’s take a deeper look at each type of sentence structure and how to form it.

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