The word "text" comes from the same root as "textile." A written work is a fabric woven from many individual threads-sentences. In a piece of writing, sentences should work together to form a clear overall design, but they can't if their threads are tangled or wander outside their place in the pattern. Hence the importance of good sentence structure, or syntax.
When you need to play it safe, stick to the simple sentence, which consists of a single independent clause. The New St. Martin's Handbook defines a clause as "a group of words containing a subject and a predicate," and continues, "Independent clauses . . . can stand alone as complete sentences . . ." Simple sentences can be as, well, simple and as brief as "She sang." The pronoun "she" serves as the subject, while the verb "sang" provides the grammatical minimum for a predicate.
Make the simple sentence your model as you write. "Short sentences are the meat and bones of good writing," declare Diana Roberts Wienbroer et al. in Rules of Thumb For Business Writers. They recommend, "Intersperse short sentences throughout your writing for clarity and strength.
They can simplify an idea. . . .
They can add rhythm. . . .
They can be blunt and forceful."
In The Elements of Style, William Strunk and E. B. White argue, "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words . . . for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." The more elaborate or complex the machine, the more things can go wrong or the more difficult it may be to operate. The same holds true for writing: the more structurally involved the sentence, the greater the chance of error in syntax, grammar, or style by the writer or of confusion on the part of the reader. Simple sentences transmit information to the reader straightforwardly, with a minimum of internal distraction or interference.
In fact, most bad sentences fail because they stray too far from this mold-the writer bites off more than he or she can chew. British writer Kingsley Amis, in his book The King's English, recalls from his journalistic days a syntactical error over-enthusiastic fellow reporters fell prone to that he names the "gorged snake" sentence. Trying to pack as much information into one sentence as possible, they loaded it with clause after clause, phrase after phrase, until it stretched down the page for many lines, eventually too weighed down by its own mass to move the article forward. Strunk and White maintain, "When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences."
Fortunately, all simple sentences don't have to look or sound alike. Most have more to them than only a noun and a verb; Wienbroer et al. observe, "Usually, a completer (a complement [the rest of the predicate besides the verb], direct object, or modifier) is added." Thus, our original simple sentence, "She sang," can be turned into
She sang while hearing us boo her.
or
She sang La Traviata.
or
Undaunted, she sang.
or even
Undaunted, she sang La Traviata while hearing us boo her.
and remain a simple sentence.
Wienbroer et al. also provide an easy way to vary the structure of simple sentences: begin some with an introductory phrase ending in a comma. As examples, they give the following:
"However, the entertainment expenses have been disallowed.
For example, we only use organic produce.
In the packet labeled Open First,' you'll find the necessary tools."
Often, these introductory phrases contain what Angela Lunsford and Robert Connors, in The New St. Martin's Handbook, call conjunctive adverbs. "Conjunctive adverbs modify an entire clause and express the connection in meaning between that clause and the preceding clause (or sentence). Examples of conjunctive adverbs include however, furthermore, therefore, and likewise," they explain. The first two of Wienbroer et al.'s example sentences above begin with conjunctive adverbs. Given that they relate their own sentence to the sentence before, introductory phrases with conjunctive adverbs work especially well in transitional sentences.
Prepositional or participial phrases can also introduce a simple sentence, as in "To get there, turn left" or "Grasping firmly, she pulled the door's handle." Using this technique selectively can prevent monotony by reversing the sentence's normal order; ordinarily we would say "Turn left to get there" and "She pulled the door's handle, grasping firmly." Such occasional reversal keeps us on our toes, like syncopation in music.
Varying the order of sentences can be important not only for syntax but for meaning. "The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship," The Elements of Style teaches. To demonstrate, it renders a sample sentence written two different ways. The first sentence reads, "You can call your mother in London and tell her all about George's taking you out to dinner for just two dollars." Most readers would be immediately either amazed or skeptical to hear of a restaurant serving a full meal for such a low price. Then the second sentence clarifies the situation: "For just two dollars you can call your mother in London and tell her all about George's taking you out to dinner." After the first sentence's two main verbs, "call" and "tell," the gerund "taking" ensues; if we leave the prepositional phrase "for just two dollars" in its usual place at the end of the sentence, we instinctively assume it modifies the closest verb (sort of), "taking." To ensure that the reader understands what "for just two dollars" refers to, we need to move it to the start of the sentence where nothing else it could possibly modify intervenes between it and "call."
The New St. Martin's Handbook reviews other types of sentence structure. The first, the compound sentence, "consists of two or more independent clauses and no dependent clause." Essentially, the compound sentence fuses what could be two separate sentences into one. Lunsford and Connors continue, "The clauses may be joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction"-like "and," "but," or "or," which relate the two clauses to each other-"or by a semicolon." We can turn one of our simple sentences from the previous section into compound sentences like so:
We booed her; undaunted, she sang La Traviata.
We booed her, but she sang La Traviata undaunted.
As with any literary device, the compound sentence should not be used arbitrarily. For the sentence to work, the subjects of its two independent clauses should be related; they must be distinct grammatically, but they should be two facets of a common theme. In our sample sentences above, the two independent clauses state two events occurring simultaneously and in reaction to each other.
The complex sentence employs a different structure. "A complex sentence consists of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause," The New St. Martin's Handbook says. By the way, dependent clauses "cannot stand alone as complete sentences," in the words of the Handbook, " . . . for they begin with a subordinating word-a subordinating conjunction or a relative pronoun-that connects them to an independent clause.
Because the window is open, the room feels cool."
The Handbook also notes that dependent clauses often serve as adjectives or adverbs modifying the independent clause and often begin with subordinating conjunctions, which "introduce adverb clauses and signal the relationship between the adverb clause and another clause, usually an independent clause. For instance, in the following sentence the subordinating conjunction while signals a time relationship, letting us know that the two events in the sentence happened simultaneously:
Sweat ran down my face while I frantically searched for my child.
Unless sales improve dramatically, the company will soon be bankrupt.
My grandmother began traveling after she sold her house."
Usually, the complex sentence is used when the idea in the dependent clause is a condition or contingency of the idea in the independent clause. The conjunction "while" tells us not only that sweat ran down the speaker's face at the same time he or she frantically searched for his or her child, but also-by implication-that this happened because of the search; likewise, in the third sentence, the dependent clause gives the time frame and reason for the action related in the independent clause. The second sentence's dependent clause presents the condition for avoiding bankruptcy. Our example might look like this as a complex sentence:
As soon as we left, she stopped singing.
Then there is the compound-complex sentence. You guessed it: a combination of the two former kinds. "A compound-complex sentence consists of two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause," say Lunsford and Connors. Thus, it combines two grammatically complete sentences, one of which must be a complex sentence. The other can be simple,
She sang, but as soon as we left, she stopped singing.
compound,
We booed her, but she sang La Traviata undaunted; as soon as we left, she stopped singing.
or even complex as well.
She sang while we booed her; as soon as we left, she stopped singing.
The compound-complex sentence combines the compound sentence and the complex sentence logically as well as structurally. The independent clauses should express interrelated ideas as in the compound sentence, and at least one of them should include a condition or contingency as in the complex sentence. The compound-complex sentence is the most elaborate sentence form, but also the most supple: with a broad palette of punctuation, one can probably write several compound-complex sentences without exactly duplicating any particular format for them.
All this is easier said than done. I can tell you about the various types of sentences and the rationale for using each type, but only you can determine for yourself at the time of writing when to use each one. Rules of Thumb For Business Writers advises, "Write important sentences several ways until you find the best phrasing." Writing is experimental, experiential; often you don't know what you need until you realize you can't use what you have. Writing also demands that you consider multiple factors at the same time-not only syntax, but grammar, style, and rhythm as well. As Kingsley Amis asserts, "The fact that a word or phrase satisfies one set of criteria is no guarantee that it satisfies all. And not only that, either. If a sentence keeps all the rules you know and still seems wrong, change it. That takes longer, but so does anything worthwhile."