Sentence

What exactly is a sentence? Well for one thing, it must contain a verb and a subject. We know that from the textbook but it should also be common sense. If someone said “on the couch”, they are stating a phrase. By definition that phrase does not make a sentence because it does not contain both a verb and a subject. Even if somebody said this in response to a question such as “Where is my wallet?”, they are still stating a phrase and not a sentence. They would need to say, “It is on the couch.” in order for it to constitute a sentence. “It” would act as the subject and “is” as the verb.

It is interesting to me that a single word can constitute a sentence (i.e. Go. Stop. Wait. All of these are one-word sentences as indicated in the book). A sentence can also be very long; however, you need to be careful not to write a run-on sentence. Email messages are one form of communication where you will find a slew of run-on sentences. Even though emails are less formal it is still a good idea to avoid any grammatical mistake when composing one. Professional writing can be completely destroyed by a run-on sentence so practicing complete sentences in all of your writing is important.

I did find an editing mistake this week. I watch a lot of sports and I always see mistakes in the graphics that are put up during games. During one basketball game it showed a graphic of the made and missed shots of one particular player. Instead of “shot selection” the graphic said, “shoot selection”. I will have to start writing these one’s down because they happen all the time.