Sentence structure
Good sentence structure can aid clarity and flow in writing. The choices you make as you construct sentences can impact the reader.
As Halliday and Hasan (1970: 2) state in their seminal book on Cohesion in English:
"A text does not CONSIST of sentences; it is REALIZED BY, or encoded in, sentences."
It is therefore very important to study this section on sentence structure alongside Text flow: coherence and cohesion ; you will find much that overlaps in these two sections of the Guide.
In this section, read about:
- Sentence length
- Combining information and ideas in longer sentences
- Relative clauses
- Noun phrases (including possessives)
- Fixed sentence patterns
- Parallel structures
There is also a list of
(You might have heard the terms comma splice or agreement - this is where you learn about what these are and how to avoid them.)
We try not to use too much technical terminology in this guide, but sometimes it is necessary to use particular grammatical terms. You may find these links useful:
References
Halliday, M. and Hasan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English. Pearson Education.