Short Sentence Stucture Tutorial

This morning's blog about paragraphs and the response, inspired me to write on on sentence structure. This is the second thing that trips up most writers.

I wrote a pun blog about 200 blogs go called Help me write good grammar. It was fun, because at first look the grammar was attrocious, but on careful analyse, it is gramatically correct.

The reason why the 'Grammar Natzies' (to coin a writingup word) cannot help you is that they are disecting the sentences and giving you the individual rules - but they are not telling you how to apply them.

Most of us, who are from Canada, Australia, or England, would not consider a sentence like this, full of clauses and phrases, as a grammar error.

Likewise, people who are acustomed to literary novels, impassioned with emotion, seaped in old English, and written to challenge the mind, human condition, and reson, would not find this - blyth - sentence incorrect.

There is a new style of sentence writing that is slowly adopting the name of American linear. This style holds a single thought in each sentence, eliminating all clauses and phrases. The subject is the main focus of the sentenc with the first word after the comma usually ending in 'ing' (gerund). The entire second part of the sentence modifies the first.

This is the style that is becoming most common in fiction writing, and why many people look at blogs written by professional writers and wonder why their grammar is poor. They are just unaccustomed to seeing sentences that are not 'linear.' To understand this concept more, a writer should learn more about the four levels of passive writing and Showing vs. Telling. That, I am not going into. I have one lesson in my class "Write Well:Prose to Proofreading" that is more than 5000 words long, and all it does is explain the four types of passive writing. It does not even broach the topic of showing.

So, to write the 'new style' of sentences, put a noun down.

Jill

Put a verb down.

ran

And then modify it

acceptance letter

And add nothing else

Jill ran home. She held the acceptance letter in a death grip all the way home.

This example....

Jill ran home, clutching the acceptance letter.

is often allowed, but is still not 'pure' linear.

Unlike us British writers.

After finding the college acceptence letter in her mail box, Jill ran home.

Or the literary people

The college acceptence letter hid in her pocket, daring her to open it, to change her life, to want this life more than any other, as she ran home. (Okay - I am not a literary writer - but you get my point)

I'll look for those other grammar posts in the next few days, so bookmark this blog.

Please - before you take my course at universalclass - or think that my grammar blogs are promoting the class - Writing Well: Prose to Proofreading is NOT for the amateur or the timid at heart. It is a gut wretching, word slashing, course - prefect for anyone who wants to become an editor

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