Guide to sentences and punctuation

X Clauses A clause is a group of words that contain a verb, such as: a) ‘The match started at one.’ b) ‘Before he left the house…’ ‘because she disliked swimming.’ Example a) can stand alone and is known as a principle clause. The examples in b) cannot stand alone and are known as subordinate clauses.

Sentences A sentence is a group of words that makes complete sense. A simple sentence consists of one clause, e.g. ‘The cat ran across the road.’ A complex sentence contains several clauses. ‘When the dog appeared, the cat ran across the road, which was full of traffic at the time.’

Forms of a sentence Statement: ‘The referee stopped the match.’ - ends with a full stop. (since statements are the most usual form, you do not need to comment on them – only the ones that are not statements.) Command: ‘Stop the match!’ - ends with a full stop or exclamation mark. Exclamation: ‘What an amazing match it was!’ - ends with an exclamation mark.

Forms of a sentence Question: ‘Was it a good match?’ - ends with a question mark. Rhetorical question: ‘Was the referee blind?’ - although rhetorical questions end with a question mark, they do not expect an answer, and have a similar function to an exclamation. Minor sentence: ‘A match I’ll never forget.’ - a minor sentence has no main verb, but makes sense by itself. It can take the form of a statement, exclamation or question.

Sentence patterns When you are asked to discuss sentence structure, you should look for certain patterns. Some common ones are:

Sentence patterns List: a writer will list a number of words, phrases or ideas. When you notice a list, look also for climax. A climax is a building up in importance. Very often items in a list will show a progression of some sort. “There are three things that will endure: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” "I think we've reached a point of great decision, not just for our nation, not only for all humanity, but for life upon the earth."

Sentence patterns Varied sentence lengths: putting in short sentences often racks up tension, as the short sentences stand out from the longer ones. “I turned my head. I waited for the dive. But it did nothing of the kind. It turned itself into an anchor. Or a thunderbolt. No kestrel this: it crashed into the crowd of martins, I think it got one, but I can’t swear to it, it was all so fast.”

Sentence patterns Repetition: this may be single words, phrases or sentence types. For example, you may notice several questions one after another. Some people dislike texting. Some are bemused by it. But it is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and adaptable.

Sentence patterns Unusual word order: certain positions in a sentence carry more emphasis than others. The most emphatic is the end of a sentence. If an idea is delayed until the end, this places special stress on it. This technique is known as inversion. ‘Round the corner, in a shower of spray, rushed an ambulance.’ If the phrase ‘an ambulance’ came first in the sentence, as you might expect, the effect would be less dramatic.