1. Professional Sentence Structures Increasing the impact and the ‘worth’ (value) of what you write! Examples taken from the following text: Killgallon, Don. Sentence Composing for College: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and Maturity. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann, 1998. Print.

2. Modifier that somewhat resembles a sentence Includes a subject and a PARTIAL verb Always missing the auxiliary verb (form of ‘to be’):  Is / Are / Was / Were Absolute

3. Examples-Closer She returned to her bench, her face showing all the unhappiness that had suddenly overtaken her.  Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy The boy watched, his eyes bulging in the dark.  Edmund Ware, “An Underground Episode”

4. Examples His hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. (Opener) ▫Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” Miss Hearne, her face burning, hardly listened to these words. (Splitter) ▫Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

5. A noun that identifies an adjacent noun or pronoun. Appositive Phrase = an appositive noun + any modifiers. Sentence opener/closer. Subject/verb splitter. Appositive

6. Examples One of the eleven brothers and sisters, Harriet was a moody, willful child. (opener)  Langston Hughes, “Road to Freedom” Other ‘not-so-professional’ ways to write this… ▫Harriet was one of the eleven brothers and sisters, and she was a moody, willful child. ▫Harriet was one of the eleven brothers and sisters. She was a moody and willful child. ▫Harriet was one of the eleven brothers and sisters; she was a moody and willful child.

7. Examples Hour after hour he stood there, silent, motionless, a shadow carved in ebony and moonlight. (closer)  James V. Marshall, Walkabout Visitors, friends of her parents or little girls of her age, were always astonished when they first saw it. (splitter)  Joyce Carol Oates, “The Doll” from Haunted

8. Participles Participles are verbs that can be… ▫Present = ‘ing’ endings ▫Past = ‘ed’ and ‘en’ endings Participle Phrases describe a NOUN. Sentence opener or closer. Subject/verb splitter. Cannot be the main verb of the sentence!

9. Example-Opener Standing there in the middle of the street, Marty suddenly thought of Halloween, of the winter and snowballs, of the schoolyard.  Murray Heyert, “The New Kid”

10. Example-Closer She was quite far from the windows which were to her left, and behind her were a couple of tall bookcases, containing all the books of the factory library.  John Hersey, Hiroshima

11. Example-Splitter Sado, searching the spot of black in the twilight sea that night, had his reward.  Pearl S. Buck, “The Enemy”

12. Assignment 1.Draft 1 sentence using an absolute as an OPENER. 2.Draft 1 sentence using an absolute as a CLOSER. 3.Draft 1 sentence using an absolute as a SPLITTER. Each sentence must originate from your comparison/contrast essay (TURNITIN.COM). Underline your absolute.

13. Assignment 4.Draft 1 sentence using an appositive phrase as an OPENER. 5.Draft 1 sentence using an appositive phrase as a CLOSER. 6.Draft 1 sentence using an appositive phrase as a SPLITTER. Each sentence must originate from your comparison/contrast essay (TURNITIN.COM). Underline your appositive.

14. Assignment 7.Draft 1 sentence using a participle as an OPENER. 8.Draft 1 sentence using a participle phrase as a CLOSER. 9.Draft 1 sentence using a participle as a SPLITTER. Each sentence must originate from your comparison/contrast essay (TURNITIN.COM). Underline your participle.

15. Assignment 10.Choose any ONE sentence in your comparison / contrast essay that needs revising.  Choose one of the 3 methods – absolute, appositive, participle, and revise it.  Write the original sentence(s) first, and then write the new, improved sentence.  Also, write the method that you used to revise it and explain WHY you chose that method.