17. Vary Your Sentence Structure

Unvaried sentence structures in a paragraph:

I was in a state prison. I fell in with a group of young blacks. They were like me. They rebelled against society. They rebelled against that national situation as they perceived it. We cursed everything American. We cursed baseball and hot dogs. We had no respect for politicians and preachers. We had no respect for lawyers. We had no respect for governors or presidents. We had no respect for senators or congressman. They all fussed whether it was right or wrong to have blacks and whites in the same prison.

A variety of sentence structures in a paragraph:

In a state prison, I fell in with a group of young blacks who, like myself, were in vociferous rebellion against what we perceived to be a continuation of slavery. We cursed everything American-including baseball and hot dogs. All the respect we may have had for politicians, preachers, lawyers, governors, presidents, senators, and congressman was utterly destroyed as we watched them wrangle over the legality or illegality, over the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of allowing blacks and whites in the same prison.

The four basic sentence structures:

1. Simple: a sentence that has only one independent clause:

Scouts are coming to the soccer game on Saturday.

2. Compound: a sentence that combines two or more independent clauses by a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, yet, so) or a semicolon:

Scouts are coming to the soccer game on Saturday, and several colleges will be represented by these scouts at the game.

3. Complex: a sentence that combines an independent clause and one or more dependent or subordinate clauses / phrases:

When Sean heard that college scouts were coming to the soccer game on Saturday, he became nervous.

4. Compound-complex: a sentence that combines two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent or subordinate clauses:

Although many of the college scouts are coming from hundreds of miles away, they are excited for the soccer game on Saturday, for it will allow them to take a good look at the high school talent.

Other sentence structures:

5. Staccato sentence: a complex sentence with a long subordinate / dependent clause or introductory phrase and a short, emphatic independent clause.

(While the disillusioned American youth turned toward Eastern culture for the spirituality of Hinduism, the acceptance of Taoism, and the selflessness of Buddhism, the Easterners loved America technology.

6. Dual parallel sentence: a parallel structure that opposes two phrases or clauses.

(Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.)

(Avoid making careless errors in your sentences; do not avoid experimenting with new sentence structures.)

7. Triple parallel sentence: a parallel structure that strings three phrases in a series.

(Every man who has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify pervasive apathy.)

8. Dovetailed sentence: sentence structures that use the last word of the last independent clause as the first word in the new or second independent clause.

(He talked at length about the war game. Game, however, is an inappropriate term for strategies that lead to death.)

9. Begin-the-same sentences: sentences that employ anaphoras or the repetition of words or phrases that begin sentences.

(The flies tormented the donkeys. The flies buzzed around the heads of the porters. The flies buzzed and hissed around our tent until we were driven to complete madness.)

10. End-the-same sentences: sentences that repeat words or phrases that occur at the ends of sentences.

(Most of the errors you make in this essay are unacceptable. Comma splices are unacceptable. Fragments are unacceptable. Inconsistencies in tense and person are unacceptable. With misspellings, almost every word you have written is unacceptable.)

11. “Drop the verb” sentence: a sentence that reverses the grammatical structure established in the beginning of the sentence in order to emphasize prominent words at the end of the sentence.

(He was kind to his enemies, but to his friends cruel.)

(He was passionate and dedicated coach, but as a teacher dull and inefficient.)

(To err is human, but to forgive divine.)-Alexander Pope

12. “The And” sentence: sentences that add conjunctions where they are not normally present in a series.

(The endless panoply of tears and scowls and guilt and contempt and boredom and self-loathing will never cease to depress me.)

(I lover her and I need her and I can’t live without her and I will do anything to be with her.)

13. “No and” sentence: sentences that leave out the conjunction at the end of a series of terms. No “and” in red, white, blue”

(Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.)- Abraham Lincoln

14. Correction sentences: sentences that interrupt the flow of a sentence with dashes in order to convey the sense that your a searching for the right words to express your meaning.

(Primitive man of indigenous cultures can teach us lessons that are important-no, indispensable-for the survival of modern man.)

15. Parenthetical sentences: a sentence that is interrupted by an aside, a parenthetical expression, in order to bring greater depth to the meaning of the sentence. (See Writing Guide #3)

(Primitive man of indigenous cultures, like the aborigines of Australia, can teach us lessons that are indispensable for the survival of modern man.)