Complete sentences: basic sentence structure

A complete sentence contains two parts: a subject and a predicate.

Subject		Predicate (the rest of the sentence)
The subject indicates what (or whom) the sentence is about.		The predicate = verb + complements Complements = everything that tells you more about a person or thing / what is being done / how / where it is being done.
The girl with black hair		kicked the soccer ball.

Complete sentence: The girl with black hair kicked the soccer ball.

Sentence parts: clauses, phrases and words

Components of a sentence While a sentence contains a subject and a predicate, the sentence can be broken into smaller units of meaning.

Parts of speech 'Parts of speech' are the words that make up a complete sentence. Nouns and verbs are examples of parts of speech. Subject Verb Object (eg. who) (does) (what) The girl kicked the red        ball Noun Verb Adjective    Noun

What is a clause?

A clause is a group of words, or unit of information within a sentence, that contains a subject and a verb.

Main (independent) clause A main clause makes complete sense on its own. Example: We value assignment writing.

Dependent clause A dependent clause depends on the main clause in order to make complete sense Example: Because we want to improve our critical thinking. (doesn’t make sense on its own)

Example of a complete complex sentence:
We value assignment writing because we want to improve our critical thinking.

What is a phrase?

A phrase is a group of two or more words which make some sense but do not make complete sense on their own.

Example:

• Won the prize
• Located in the area
• Excellent writer

The smart student	achieved a high mark	for the assignment.		Sentence
The smart student				Noun phrase
	achieved a high mark			Verb phrase
		for the assignment.		Prepositional phrase

Ask yourself - does your sentence make sense on its own?

Ambiguous phrases and dangling modifiers

Clauses can be changed into modifying phrases only when the subjects of both clauses are the same.

These clauses cannot be combined like this because they have different subjects:
Clause 1: Anna was walking to the tutorial room. (subject - Anna)
Clause 2: Anna’s phone rang. (subject - phone)

Now the sentence makes sense:
While Anna was walking to the tutorial room, her phone rang.

Run-on sentences

Run-on sentences are sentences that run on without the control of joining words or punctuation to separate the different ideas and clarify the meaning of the sentence.

Run-on sentences that join two separate ideas with a comma are sometimes called comma splices. Please remember that commas are not used to combine independent clauses.

Remedies
You can usually correct run-on sentences by:

• Using a joining word or conjunction (e.g., for, and, not, but, or, yet, so) to connect the two clauses or ideas
• Using correct punctuation (not a comma because commas separate items or ideas)
• Creating two separate sentences (e.g., in the case of very long, run-on sentences)

Correcting a run-on sentence

Example: I was unsure which essay topic to choose, I was too tired to decide.

1. Correction by use of a joining word:
   I was unsure which essay topic to choose because I was too tired to decide.
   
   
2. Correction by using appropriate punctuation:
   I was unsure which essay topic to choose: I was too tired to decide.
   
   
3. Correction by making two separate sentences:
   I was unsure which essay topic to choose. I was too tired to decide.