GrammarCompletenessThe most important point about a sentence, from the grammatical perspective, is that it should be a unit of language that is complete in itself. Of course, the first word in a sentence should begin with a capital letter, and the punctuation mark that closes a sentence should be a period, a question mark, or an exclamation point, but these are essentially rules of presentation. Their purpose is simply to emphasize that a sentence is a unit of language that can stand alone. The capital letter marks the beginning, just as the period, question mark, or exclamation point marks the end of a complete and independent grammatical unit.Because completeness is the essential quality that defines a sentence, it is possible for a sentence to consist of no more than a single word. "Yes." is grammatically acceptable as a sentence, therefore, as is "Yes!" or "Yes?" "Go!" "Explain!" or "Really?"The concept of "completeness" is perhaps not altogether easy to grasp. In what sense, it might be asked, are "Yes!" and "Really?" and "Go!" complete, when some much longer and, on the face of it, more conventionally sentence-like strings of words are not? The answer is that a unit of language is complete when no more needs to be said to make it understandable. Under certain circumstances, particularly when a person has to answer a question or comment on something that somebody else has said, a speaker's attitude or response can be fully conveyed in a single word such as "Yes!" or "Really?" Those words can therefore function as sentences."Was the victim alive or dead when you found him, lieutenant?"
"Dead."
"Thank you, lieutenant, that is all we need to know." Since it is "all we need to know," "Dead." here functions as a sentence.Completeness and understandability are, admittedly, relative concepts for grammatical purposes. They do not depend on the word or words in the sentence making the situation absolutely clear without reference to anything else. "Yes." and "Really?" fully convey a response or an attitude, but they do not tell us what the speaker is responding to. The same is true of more conventional sentences. "It hurt me" is a sentence. It can stand alone, and it makes sense when it stands alone. But it would only be completely understandable if you knew what "it" was, who was being hurt, and whether "hurt" referred to physical or emotional damage. That kind of explicitness is not required for grammatical completeness, which is necessarily more limited. The best way to describe grammatical completeness is negatively. A sentence is complete when there is nothing missing from it that its words would lead you to expect to be there. This is an issue that will be dealt with in a moment.Verbs in SentencesA great deal of what has been said in the preceding paragraphs seems to fly in the face of a rule that most people will remember about sentence construction: To be grammatically correct a sentence must contain a verb, specifically, a finite verb. A finite verb is limited in person, tense, and number. It is, in other words, a verb such as goes, went, was going, will go, had gone, or would have gone, each of which can be preceded by a personal pronoun of one kind or another, can be defined as either singular or plural, and signifies either past, present, or future time. It is not an infinitive, such to go, or a participle, such as going or gone, on its own.This is not a universal rule. Not all sentences contain verbs; completeness is not dependent on the presence of a finite verb. Grammarians do, however, put sentences without finite verbs in a special category of their own. They call them "minor sentences." "To return to the matter in hand." and "What an absolutely perfect day!" are, like "Yes!" and "Really?" minor sentences.Minor and Major SentencesMinor sentences are, on the whole, more at home in spoken than in written English. If you are writing dialogue, then you may be called upon to write minor sentences quite frequently. Ordinary continuous prose, especially in a neutral or more formal style, should not contain too many of them. Do not be misled by what has been said in the paragraphs above into thinking that you have grammatical license to write sentences without finite verbs. It is usually advisable to think about making any minor sentences that you write in a first draft into full sentences by combining them with other material.Let us move the argument forward by turning our attention to sentences that do contain verbs—called "major sentences" by grammarians—and by considering the question of completeness from a different angle.Although that was part of my original plan and was, indeed, the main reason why I had taken the trouble to pay Joan a visit on that gray October day in Columbus, Ohio, when I should have been covering the president's speech in Cleveland, because the election was no more than a few weeks away These words do not constitute a sentence of either the major or the minor kind. Despite the fact that there are more than 50 words, including several verbs, despite the fact that they make sense up to a point and do not—at least until such time as a period is placed after away—contain any grammatical errors, and despite the fact that they seem to fall away nicely toward a conclusion at the end, they are incomplete. In nongrammatical terms, there is something missing that the words used lead you to be expect to be present. The grammatical reason why these words are incomplete can be stated more succinctly: They contain no main clause.ClausesA clause is a meaningful group of words that contains a verb. Clauses are of two basic types: main clauses and subordinate, or dependent, clauses. What crucially defines a main clause is what crucially defines a sentence: It must be complete in itself, written in such a way that no more needs to be said to make it understandable. It follows, therefore, that a main clause can function as a sentence by itself, and that if a sentence consists of one clause only, that clause must be a main clause.It hurt me. The title character of Moby-Dick is a great white whale. Throughout his period in office as U.S. secretary of state, John Foster Dulles pursued a policy of opposition to the USSR. These are all sentences that consist of a single main clause. It should also be noted that a main clause in a major sentence must contain a finite verb.Logically enough, and as their name suggests, subordinate, or dependent, clauses are not complete in themselves. They not only leave unsaid something that needs to be said, they also positively create an expectation that there is more information to come. They depend on the main clause to supply that information. The easiest way to recognize them is that they usually begin with such words as although, if, because, since, when, where, or while.Where it hurt me Because the title character of Moby-Dick is a great white whale Although John Foster Dulles pursued a policy of opposition to the USSR throughout his period in office as U.S. secretary of state These are not sentences, because the addition of a subordinating word at the beginning has rendered each one incomplete. When someone says or writes Because the title character of Moby-Dick is a great white whale, we expect a continuation. The word because indicates that the following words describe the cause of some particular fact, event, or state of affairs. Until we know the effect or result of that cause, the information the writer is offering us is incomplete. Something is missing that because leads us to expect to be there, and so the statement is not a sentence.If we look again at the lengthy and quite plausible-sounding example given earlier,Although that was part of my original plan and was, indeed, the main reason why I had taken the trouble to pay Joan a visit on that gray October day in Columbus, Ohio, when I should have been covering the president's speech in Cleveland, because the election was no more than a few weeks away we shall see that all the verbs it contains are inside clauses governed by subordinating conjunctions: although, why, when, and because. The example, therefore, consists of a string of subordinate clauses, and the writer never gets to the point. He or she explicitly concedes something by starting the sentence with although but does not inform us of what made this concession necessary. To complete the sentence, all that is needed are a few more words:Although that was part of my original plan, … the situation had changed dramatically. orAlthough that was part of my original plan, … I was no longer convinced of the soundness of the plan. Both of these clauses—the situation had changed dramatically and I was no longer convinced of the soundness of the plan—are grammatically complete in themselves and as such are acceptable as main clauses or as sentences in their own right. As soon as one of them is attached to the original word string, the rules of grammar are satisfied, and the sentence may stand.It will be noted, however, that neither of the two suggested additions is particularly long in relation to the sentence as a whole. This leads us to an important point. The main clause is the essential part of the sentence for grammatical purposes, but, in terms of size, it does not have to make up the greater part of the sentence, nor does it have to carry all, or even the principal part, of the sentence's information content. The fact that it is the key component, however, means that it always carries weight. When constructing a sentence, you will often have to decide which information you will put in your main clause and which you will convey through subordinate clauses. The balance and the emphasis of the sentence—and some its meaning—will depend on the decision you make.This topic will be further discussed in the section the logic of the sentence (page 105). For the moment, let us continue to deal with the basics.Coordination and SubordinationYou will often wish to communicate more than one piece of information or combine more than one idea in a single sentence. There are two basic methods of combining ideas in sentences; the grammatical terms used to describe them are "coordination" and "subordination." The basic rule is as follows: Where ideas are of equal importance, they should be coordinated; where one idea is more important than another, the less important idea should be subordinated.CoordinationCoordination is the linking together of clauses, and thus ideas, of equal value through the use of particular words or punctuation marks. The words in question are known as "coordinating conjunctions," "correlative conjunctions," and "conjunctive adverbs," or, more generally, as "coordinators." The relevant punctuation marks are the comma and the semicolon.The coordinating conjunctions areand, but, for, nor, or, so, and yet. The correlative conjunctions areeither … or, neither … nor, whether … or, both … and, and not only … but also. Conjunctive adverbs includeconsequently, furthermore, however, meanwhile, moreover, nevertheless, therefore, and thus. Here are some simple sentences in which coordination is used:Margaret had forgotten, but Carlos most certainly had not. Either the package has been lost in the mail, or the supplier forgot to send it. The sergeant had been badly wounded in a previous action; therefore, she was not at her post on the day in question. Notice that, if you use a conjunctive adverb to join two main clauses, you should separate the clauses by a semicolon and place a comma after the adverb.All the sentences used as examples above consist of two main clauses. It may seem like a contradiction in terms for a sentence to be able to have more than one main clause, but remember that "main clause" is a technical term. The two statements the package has been lost in the mail and the supplier forgot to send it are both grammatically complete in themselves, and so both are potential stand-alone sentences, both are main clauses, and the fact that they are conjoined by either … or does not alter their status. In that particular sentence, we cannot replace the coordinator by a punctuation mark, but in the first sentence we could:Margaret had forgotten; Carlos most certainly had not. Main clauses should usually be separated by a semicolon when there is no coordinator in the sentence. When a coordinator is present, commas will usually suffice:Forget the past, concentrate on the present, and all will be well. Coordinators can also be used to link two subordinate clauses:Since we do not have sufficient time to spare, nor can we really afford the expense, it would be better to abandon the project. Whether because he had mistaken my meaning, or because my meaning was unclear, he continued to behave as if nothing was wrong. While he was removing the detonator, thus deactivating the bomb, the rest of us watched from a safe distance. To repeat the basic rule, coordination is the linking together of two or more clauses or phrases of equal value. Subordination, by contrast, is the linking of a comparatively less important idea to a more important one.SubordinationSubordinate clauses are introduced by subordinating conjunctions such asafter, although, as, as if, as though, because, before, if, in order that, since, so that, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, and while or relative pronouns such asthat, which, who, whom, and whose. Here are alternative versions of the examples used earlier. This time they contain subordinating instead of coordinating linkers:Although Margaret had forgotten, Carlos most certainly had not. Unless the package has been lost in the mail, the supplier forgot to send it. Because the sergeant had been badly wounded in a previous action, she was not at her post on the day in question. As can be seen, the difference between the coordinated and subordinated versions of these particular examples is fairly slight; nevertheless, there is a difference. For a full discussion of that difference, see the rhythm of the sentence (page 115).Length of SentencesThere are no hard-and-fast rules governing the length of sentences. A sentence should be as long as it needs to be to convey all the information the writer wishes to put into it, and no longer. As has already been demonstrated, the minimum length for a sentence is one single word, and there is no maximum length. So long as a sentence obeys the rules of grammar and constitutes a unit that is complete in itself, it can stretch as far as the writer's imagination and vocabulary will take it.That said, however, there seems to be general agreement among the experts that writers should aim at an average length of between 15 and 20 words. This does not mean that writing sentences above or below that length is in any way to be discouraged, nor that writers should spend much, if any, of their precious time counting the number of words they write and dividing the total by the number of sentences—still less that they should panic if the resultant average is more than 20 or fewer than 15. The figure of 15 to 20 words is intended as a very rough guide.The length of the sentences you write will partly depend on your personal style. It will also depend on the kind of reader you are targeting. Sophisticated readers, to put it bluntly, are more able to cope with long sentences than unsophisticated ones. If you are writing for the popular press or for children, it will usually be helpful to make a point of keeping your sentences short. In that case you should aim at an overall average in the region of 10 to 15, rather than 15 to 20 words. If, on the other hand, you are writing for a learned journal, the editor will probably have something to say if you submit an article in which none of the sentences are more than 10 words long.Guidelines are necessarily given in the form of averages, and averages by their very nature iron out differences. Yet it is the differences between sentences that are important, and this applies as much to length as to any other quality. A paragraph made up of uniform 15- or 20-word sentences is likely a poor paragraph for that reason alone. It is much better, all other things being equal, to provide your reader with a mixture of sentences of different lengths. It will keep your reader alert, vary the pace of the prose and enable you to exploit the different qualities possessed by sentences of different lengths.Short SentencesShort sentences, by and large, generate a fast tempo and can be used effectively to narrate action and create tension.The car was parked right outside the door. Joe revved the engine now and then to remind us to hurry. I stuffed the bills into the bag. Carl kept his gun trained on the cashier. Carl's hand was trembling slightly. The cashier's hand was trembling too as he handed me the bills. I was cool enough till I heard the siren. The cashier stopped. I stopped. Joe didn't stop. He took off with a squeal of tires. The excitement and drama of a bank heist is aptly conveyed in a series of short sharp sentences. If you were describing a leisurely picnic by the side of a river, a similar technique might be less appropriate.I sliced the bread. Joe buttered it. Carl was still trying to catch us a fish. He had the line around his big toe. It had worked for Huck Finn. The water flowed. The breeze blew. Nothing happened. The fish in that river just didn't like pastrami. A series of short sentences can be even less appropriate outside a narrative context, for example, in a report:The building is in a dilapidated condition. Part of the roof is missing. Water coming through the roof has rotted some of the floor. Paint is coming off the walls. There is no electricity. Squatters have been living in some of the downstairs rooms. Short sentences also may be inappropriate in a letter:I miss you more than I can say. I have been feeling bad. I have been to see the doctor. He never says anything useful. The pills he gave me last time didn't work. I just threw them down the toilet. When are you coming back? The first passage reads as if a surveyor made notes while going around the building and simply copied out the notes when he or she got back to the office, without attempting to "write them up" at all. If you were the recipient of the second passage, meanwhile, you might be seriously worried that the writer's nerves were about to give way.Short sentences in large numbers are jerky. Remember that, long or short, a sentence is a complete unit. When you put a lot of short sentences together, it is rather like creating a mosaic from many separate stones except that your reader has to look at them in sequence and cannot stand back to get the overall effect. Remember also that when you put a number of complete units side by side, you leave the reader to work out the relationship between them.Combining Short SentencesThe following passage illustrates the problem mentioned in the preceding sentence, the missing links that sometimes make a sequence of short sentences less than completely clear:Ben has resigned from the company. He has had a serious argument with the managing director. The problems have been of long standing. He believes he would have better prospects in another company. He was an extremely popular member of the staff. We are all devastated. This passage is not exactly unclear, but it could be clearer. We would probably infer that Ben had not been happy in his job, possibly because he was not given a promotion, that these long-standing problems culminated in a serious argument with the managing director, and that this argument finally prompted Ben to resign. But this is, essentially, a story that we make up from the material provided by the writer. It is just as possible that the argument was the result, rather than the cause, of Ben handing in his resignation. Ordinary experience would suggest that this is less likely, but the writer does not rule out the possibility. Nor does the writer tell us precisely what role Ben's ambition played in his decision to leave.This, then, is a passage where a good deal would be gained by combining one or more of the short sentences into longer ones to make the relationship between the different ideas or actions explicit:Ben has resigned from the company after a serious argument with the managing director. In fact, his problems here have been of long standing, and he now believes he would have better prospects in another company. He was an extremely popular member of the staff. We are all devastated. It could also be reworked as follows:Ben has resigned from the company. The problems have been of long standing, and he has always believed he would have better prospects in another company. In the end, he had a serious argument with the managing director and left. He was an extremely popular member of the staff. We are all devastated. In both of these versions, combining some of the short sentences and inserting a few linking words or phrases—in fact and now in the first, and in the end in the second—give a much better sense of the sequence of events and of the cause-and-effect relationship between them, albeit the interpretation placed on the original is slightly different in the two cases.Longer sentences do improve the sense of flow in a piece of writing, as we can demonstrate by giving a similar treatment to the earlier example of the dilapidated building. In the passage, the second, third, and fourth sentences are all of equal value, in that each one illustrates a particular aspect of the dilapidated state of the building. Simply linking them to the first sentence by means of a colon and listing them in order would make this plain and, at the same time, give a better flow. It would also indicate that some thought had been given to presenting the information in a sophisticated way.The building is in a dilapidated condition: Part of the roof is missing, water coming through the roof has rotted some of the floor, and paint is coming off the walls. There is also no electricity, and squatters have been living in some of the downstairs rooms. If you feel that you have produced a passage in which there are too many short sentences, then combine them. Decide which sentences contain major ideas and which contain minor ones, coordinate ideas of equal value, and rework minor points as subordinate clauses or phrases in sentences that center on a major point.Long SentencesAlthough problems can arise when writers string several short sentences together, sentences that are short or of medium length have the advantage that they are, on the whole, easy to keep under control. As the length of a sentence starts to grow, inexperienced writers or writers whose attention slips may find that the sentence loses shape or focus.Let us refer again to an example used earlier:Although that was part of my original plan and was, indeed, the main reason why I had taken the trouble to pay Joan a visit on that gray October day in Columbus, Ohio, when I should have been covering the president's speech in Cleveland, because the election was no more than a few weeks away. By the time he or she reaches the "end," the writer seems simply to have forgotten how the sentence started and so fails to provide the crucial main clause. This can and does happen quite frequently:Busy with the tasks of everyday, the cleaning, the cooking, the washing, the sewing, the hundred and one tasks that wearied my body, filled my mind with trivial thoughts on which I would have spent no time at all—or so at least it seemed to me then—in the happy days when I was a blessedly unmarried, childless Virginia spinster, my soul shrank and became a small, flaccid, defeated thing. Busy with the task of evoking her mood, the writer loses track of her starting point and forgets that it is she herself, not her soul (the subject of the main clause, to which, grammatically, all the introductory material relates), that is cleaning the house and washing diapers. She has built a progression into the sentence—wearied my body, filled my mind—that leaves us perhaps waiting to hear what effect all these domestic duties had on her soul. But her soul should take its rightful place in the series, and the subject of the main clause should be the woman herself, since it is she who is busy with the tasks of everyday.The writer is perhaps justified in trying to convey a wearisome, repetitive routine in one long, drawn-out sentence rather than a series of short, sharp, crisp ones. Nevertheless, there is nothing to be gained from boring and mystifying the reader. A more satisfactory version of the sentence might look like this:Busy with the tasks of everyday—the cleaning, the cooking, the washing, the sewing—that wearied my body, filled my mind with trivial thoughts, and made my soul shrink until it became a small, flaccid, defeated thing, I had scarcely time to stop and wonder how all these things, on which I would have spent no time at all in the happy days when I was a blessedly husbandless, childless, and possibly feckless Virginia spinster, had come to make up the totality of what I called my life. You cannot always repair a long sentence by cutting it into shorter ones. In cases like the two dealt with above, the sentences actually need to be made longer to work properly. The critical point is not to lose your grip on the logic of the sentence, not to become so involved in the development of your ideas or the evocation of a scene or mood that you forget about the basic structure you are working with.Dividing Up Long SentencesDespite what was said in the previous paragraph, many longer sentences would benefit from being broken up. Dividing up excessively long sentences not only makes the text more readable; it also allows ideas that have been sharing space and possibly competing for the reader's attention to have both room to breathe and the prominence that comes from being encapsulated in an independent unit. Consider this example:Too many of us forget that wonderful instruction of the Psalmist "Be still and know," and we seek knowledge instead in the rush and tumble of experience, where impressions fall upon us continually from every side, where, indeed, we are threatened with "information overload," for only knowledge that is reflected upon and assimilated can become usable knowledge and not a burdensome excess, but reflection and assimilation can take place only in stillness. Coordination is a very simple and useful way of linking ideas, but it should not be used to excess. If you try to string too many clauses together using and, but, and so forth, the end result is likely to seem as breathless as a child's list: We went to the zoo, and we went to the diner, and we went to the movies, but I didn't like the movie so much, and we went to … A sentence that contains a great many coordinators, therefore, is often a sentence that would benefit from being divided up. The task is usually fairly simple, because the coordinators generally mark the natural breaks. So we could recast the previous example in sentences of more manageable length like this:Too many of us forget that wonderful instruction of the Psalmist "Be still and know." We seek knowledge instead in the rush and tumble of experience, where impressions fall upon us continually from every side and where we are, indeed, threatened with information overload. Only knowledge that is reflected upon and assimilated can become usable knowledge. Knowledge that we cannot use is a burdensome excess. Reflection and assimilation, however, can take place only in stillness. If the passage is split up into smaller units, readers are better able to follow the writer's arguments; indeed, we are more likely to be able to reflect upon and assimilate thoughts that are not poured over us in a flood.Sentences do not even have to be excessively long to benefit from being divided up.A no-fly zone is an area over which aircraft, especially those of another country, are forbidden to fly and in which they are liable to be shot down if they enter it. The latter part of that sentence is extremely clumsy. The definition would surely be clearer and crisper if the two parallel clauses, over which … and in which …, became two separate sentences.A no-fly zone is an area over which aircraft, especially those of another country, are forbidden to fly. Any aircraft that enter it are liable to be shot down. Finally, consider this example:Within this general context, this article aims to present and discuss changes that are emerging in the framework of Italian local government policies; and discussing critically, with reference to the Italian case, the relationship between change in the idea of local territories and change in urban and territorial policies. The semicolon here seems to represent a frantic and ultimately forlorn attempt by the writer to stitch together two elements that are grammatically incompatible: The first clause centers on a finite verb—aims—the second, on a participle—discussing. (The writer should also, incidentally, make it clear whether the "framework" itself is changing or whether more general changes are emerging within that framework.)Within this general context, this article aims to present and discuss changes that are emerging in Italian local government policies. It also discusses critically, with reference to the Italian case, the relationship between change in the idea of local territories and change in urban and territorial policies. Summing UpTo sum up, both long and short sentences have their uses, their special qualities, and their disadvantages. You may weary your readers by bombarding them with staccato statements, but you may just as easily weary them by stretching their attention span beyond a reasonable length, and you run the risk of confusing yourself in the process. Never hesitate, therefore, to divide sentences that seem too long or to integrate sentences that seem too short. Finally, you should be alert to the length of your sentences not to keep to a mathematical average but to ensure that your prose is appropriate to your subject matter and your readership and that it has sufficient variety to retain your reader's interest.
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