5.5  Sentence Variety

The name of this characteristic on the rubric is Language Use/Sentence Structure. Deke's teacher wrote "Word choice" and "Vary sentences" to tell him how to improve in the area of language use and sentence structure. If Deke's paper is full of simple, repetitive sentences, it won't be very interesting to read. Just writing long sentences might not be an improvement, either. A variety of sentences would be an improvement.

There are entire books about sentence structure, and we don't have room to do a thorough job here of teaching you 20 different sentence structures. You will, however, see the two worst mistakes you can make with sentences and also the four basic sentence types.

A Little Variety

Here are two expressions of the same idea in sentences of different lengths.

1. I went to the show. I was early. I was the only one there. No one else was there. I waited for half an hour. I had a lot of time. I thought a lot. Then more people came. Two more came. We went in. We went in together. We took seats. We sat in the balcony.
   
   
2. I went to the show so early that it was half an hour before two others arrived, so I had a lot of time to think before we went in and sat down together in the balcony.

Most writing does not look like either of these examples. Most writing has a mix of shorter and longer sentences, like this third example.

3. I went to the show, but I was early. I was the only one there. As I waited for half an hour, I had a lot of time to think. Then two others came and we went in and took seats in the balcony.

Bad Sentences, Good Sentences

The two worst mistakes you can make with sentences are opposites: fragments and run-on sentences. Fragments are not enough --they are incomplete sentences that leave out the subject, the verb, or both. Here are some examples:

      Went slowly down the beach (no subject)

      All of us (no verb)

      The other day (no subject or verb)

You can see that these fragments could be assembled to make a respectable sentence: The other day, all of us went slowly down the beach. Fragments can often be corrected just by adding something or combining several fragments --but first you have to see them. An important part of the editing process is reviewing your paper just for sentence errors.

Run-on sentences, as the name suggests, run on and on and on, like a breathless person telling you an exciting story with stopping to breathe: The other day, all of us went slowly down the beach and the man looked suspicious but he wasn't anybody we knew so we went farther and got wet and the man showed up again and we said "Hey, stop" but he turned and kept walking I guess he didn't hear us.

Do you know how to "repair" this run-on? You make it into several shorter sentences. The added punctuation is in boldface so you can see the corrections. The other day, all of us went slowly down the beach. We saw a man who looked suspicious, but he wasn't anybody we knew. We went farther and got wet, and the man showed up again. We said "Hey, stop", but he turned and kept walking. I guess he didn't hear us.

A short sentence isn't always a fragment, and a long one isn't always a run-on, but sentence length is something to look for when you review your paper. Besides getting rid of fragments and run-on sentences, you can see if you have written varied sentences rather than all short or all long.

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