In this week's Writing with Confidence blog, we’ll be looking at sentence structure and the most common errors students make while completing academic assignments.
As a student you are probably either finalising assignments before the end of the academic year or preparing for your mid-year exams depending on where you are in the world. Many of my students have been asking for tips that will get them the best results at this important time. To that end, I’ve been looking at the essays I have read from students around the world, thinking about the most frequent errors I see on a daily basis in academic writing. By far sentence structure seems to be one of the hardest parts of essay writing for many secondary and tertiary students. So today, we’re going to jump into this topic and look at how to avoid the three most common sentence construction errors. We’ll also be looking at how to avoid some of the common pitfalls and correct these errors.
In my experience as an academic coach, many students battle to understand how to correct their essays when they don’t understand the language used in the feedback. If you don’t know what the feedback refers to, how can you address it?
So let’s unpack three common feedback comments you might receive and how to remedy these issues. In the spotlight are:
1. Sentence fragments
2. Choppy sentences
3. Run-on sentences
First up, the dreaded SENTENCE FRAGMENT.
Simply put, these are sentences which are incomplete. A full sentence has both a subject and a verb and communicates a full thought. When a sentence is missing one of its components it is called a sentence fragment. Often, you will find that when you get to end of a sentence fragment you are left with a question which should have been answered in the sentence. This might be the result of leaving out a single word which is the easiest type of sentence fragment to fix.
When the verb is missing, you may have to add more than a single word, in fact sometimes an additional clause is needed to ensure you have a full sentence which gives all the necessary information for your reader to receive and understand your intended message.
In the third type of fragment, you have a prepositional phrase where the preposition is left to stand alone which leaves you with an incomplete thought. To complete the sentence, you need to add some action to put the preposition in context.
Finally, some fragments are dependent clauses that can’t stand alone. Simply put, the clause depends on another clause to give it meaning or value. Sometimes you can simply remove the subordinating conjunction (although, after, before, because, how, if, once, or since) which appears at the beginning of a subordinate to fix this issue. Alternatively, you can add an independent clause before or after the dependent clause. As the name suggests, an independent clause is one which can stand on its own and be considered a full sentence.
I understand that all the grammar names may be confusing so to simplify the process, when you read your work aloud, ask yourself if a sentence leaves you asking a question. If it does then you probably have an incomplete sentence or fragment.
From time to time, you may see journalists and novelists using fragments for emphasis, but it is best to avoid these in formal or academic writing.
Moving along, we have short, CHOPPY SENTENCES
As the name suggests these are full sentences but they tend to be very short “The cat sat.” This isn’t a problem if you use them sparingly but when you use too many in quick succession it gives your writing a choppy rhythm which can make your writing seem unsophisticated. It can also make your ideas seem disconnected.
Your work will also seem disconnected if you have too many consecutive short, simple sentences which begin with a simple subject. The solution here is to do one of the following:
1. Connect some of the sentences and add variety to your structures.
2. Use conjunctions (such as and, for, but, although, both, as long as, wherever) to join your sentences and show connecting or contrasting ideas.
3. Add phrases that add information about the noun to make the sentence more interesting.
4. Use modifying phrases which are phrases built around an adjective. For example, using a modifying phrase, you would change the verb “expects” to a gerund “expecting” to join two short sentences.
Using these tips, try starting your sentences in different ways and combining similar or contrasting ideas to make your sentences more interesting. In academic writing, you can create impact but using your short sentences to make dramatic statements.
Remember to vary the length of your sentences to make your writing more interesting as too many long sentences in succession can be just as boring as too many short sentences. While adding variety, try never to string more than three clauses together. We’ll be discussing long, complex sentences and the problems these may cause in another blog.
Finally, the RUN-ON SENTENCE.
A run-on is a sentence that has two or more independent clauses joined together incorrectly. It can make your writing unclear or confusing. The run-on sentences is a common mistake, but the fixes are actually pretty easy.
I’ll take you through the two most common types of run-on sentences I encounter on a daily basis. The first is the fused sentence which is a type of run-on that happens when two independent clauses, or complete sentences, are joined together without any punctuation. Without any punctuation between the two sentences we have a run-on sentence. Think of it like two peas rolling towards one another on your plate with nothing to stop them colliding. If you want them not to hit one another you need to put your fork, the punctuation, between them. You could either use a semi-colon to keep them as one sentence or a full stop (a period for my America friends) to make two short sentences.
The second type of run on sentence is the comma splice. This is a run-on sentence in which a comma is used to join two full sentences. The comma is not strong enough to join them correctly. Think of this as trying to glue two pieces of wood together with paper glue, the bond will not be strong enough to support the weight of the wood and hold them together.
There are a couple of ways to fix this problem. Firstly, we could add a comma and a conjunction to make a compound sentence. Remember that when creating a compound sentence, you need to include a comma and a conjunction between the two independent sentences. Your conjunctions could include (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so, because).
The second simple solution to the comma splice, is to use a semicolon between the independent clauses if the ideas are closely related, or we could use a full stop to separate them.
Another type of run-on which is less often seen is polysyndeton which happens when there are too many conjunctions in a sentence. This leads to a sentence which has too many actions taking place making this a confusing sentence to read. You would be better off separating the ideas and creating multiple compound sentences.
However, it's important to remember that not all long sentences are run-ons. As long as punctuation and conjunctions are used correctly and the meaning isn’t lost, long sentences are just fine. But try not to have too many long sentences one after another, and don’t make your sentences too long. A good sentence length is about 15 to 20 words, after that you may start to lose control of the sentence and your meaning could be lost. But we’ll talk about good sentence structure in detail in another blog post.
For now, I think you’ve got more than enough to think about and I hope you’ve learned something you can use. If you want more writing tips, check out my free essay writing tips cheat sheet at https://lockedinlanguage.com/freebie
I’ll be back next week with another writing topic to discuss. Until then have a wonderful week.