Sentence Structure
Sentence structure is the Big Deal when it comes to Usage/Mechanics
problems. Of the 40 Usage/Mechanics questions, almost half of them
(18 to be exact) will test you on your knowledge of sentence structure,
the topics of which include:
-
Connecting and Transitional Words
- Subordinate
or Dependent Clauses
- Sentence
Fragments
- Comma
Splices
- Run-on
Sentences
- Misplaced
Modifiers
- Parallelism
Connecting and Transitional Words
We’ve already mentioned coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for,
etc.) and transitional adverbs (however, nevertheless, moreover,
etc.) in “Punctuation.” Here you’ll learn more about these and other
transitional words.
Coordinating Conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet)
connect words, phrases, and independent clauses of equal importance
in a sentence.
WORDS: You can hand
the bottle to Seamus or Bea.
Liz and Amanda got down on the dance
floor.
PHRASES: To get there, you must drive
over a bridge and through a farm.
We walked by the park but not by the
river.
CLAUSES: Tim can go to the store, or Jen
can go instead.
It’s only ten o’clock, yet I feel really
sleepy. |
When joining two words or phrases, you should not use
a comma, but (as demonstrated in “Commas”) if you have a list of
more than two words or phrases, commas should separate them and
precede the conjunction. A comma also needs to precede the coordinating
conjunction when it joins two independent clauses, as in the sentence
“Tim can go to the store, or Jen can go instead,” above.
Transitional Adverbs
Like coordinating conjunctions, these adverbs (however, also, consequently, nevertheless, thus, moreover, furthermore,
etc.) can join independent clauses. When they do, they should be
preceded by a semicolon (see “Semicolons”) and followed, most of
the time, by a comma. Short adverbs, such as “thus,” do not need
a comma. Here are some examples of transitional adverbs in action:
Joe always raves about soccer;
however, he always refuses to watch a match.
If you can’t go to the prom with me, let me know as soon
as possible; otherwise, I’ll resent you and your inability
to communicate for the rest of my life. |
You need to remember that transitional adverbs must be
accompanied by semicolons. If you see a transitional adverb on its
own or preceded by a comma on the English Test, you should immediately
know there’s an error.
Subordinating Conjunctions
When you have two independent clauses, but you feel that
one is more important than the other, you can use a subordinating
conjunction to connect them. In other words, you use a subordinating
conjunction (because, when, since, after, until, although, before,
etc.) to make one clause dependent on the other. By subordinating
one clause, you show the reader the relationship between the two
clauses. For example, take the following two sentences:
I ate a rotten egg.
I became violently ill. |
It seems likely that eating the rotten egg caused the
violent illness. To make that relationship grammatically clear,
you can rephrase the sentences as:
Because I ate a rotten
egg, I became violently ill. |
Let’s try another example:
I found out my dog was really a rat.
I called the exterminator. |
Put them through the subordinating conjunction transformation
machine:
After I found out
my dog was really a rat, I called the exterminator.
I called the exterminator after I found
out my dog was really a rat. |
In these examples, “I found out my dog was
really a rat” becomes subordinate to “I called the exterminator.”
You can base your decision on which clause to subordinate by determining
the relationship between the clauses. In the example above, the
discovery about the “dog” leads to the call; in other words, the
discovery is the cause and calling the exterminator the result.
Subordinating the cause to the result often makes the most sense
when forming these sentences. For further discussion of this topic,
move on to the next section.
Subordinate or Dependent Clauses
When you’re tested on subordinate conjunctions, you’ll
need to select the most appropriate conjunction and place it correctly
within the sentence. When you’re tested on subordinate and dependent
clauses, you’ll need to decide how to form the whole sentence correctly. As
touched upon above, not all clauses deserve the same emphasis
in a sentence. Equality is a good thing, but in the writing world
you’ve got to give preference to some clauses over others.
You can run into problems if you’re too liberal
with your coordinating conjunctions and transitional
adverbs (the adverbs that link independent clauses). These adverbs assume
that the clauses being connected deserve equal weight in a sentence.
Take a look at this sentence:
Everyone regards Ginger as the most
promising student in the class, and she gets the highest grades;
also, she is the president of the student council. |
This sentence doesn’t read very well. Subordinating some
of the clauses will improve the flow of the sentence:
Everyone regards Ginger as the most
promising student in the class because she gets
the highest grades and is the president of the student council. |
This new sentence explains why Ginger is “the most promising
student” by subordinating the clauses that cite her high grades
and student council presidency.
Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences that tend
to look like this on the English Test:
We didn’t go outside. Even
though the rain had stopped.
Tommy could not pay for his lunch. Having spent
his last dollars on sunglasses.
Always a bit shy. She found herself unable
to talk to the other kids. |
The sentence fragments above are not sentences on their
own. They can be attached to the independent clauses next to them
to form complete sentences:
We didn’t go outside, even
though the rain had stopped.
Having spent his last dollars on sunglasses, Tommy
could not pay for his lunch.
Always a bit shy, she found herself unable
to talk to the other kids. |
The answer choices on English Test questions will often
make clear whether you should incorporate a fragment into a neighboring
sentence. For example:
 |
| We didn’t go | outside. Even | though the rain |
| | 17 | |
|
17. | A. | NO CHANGE |
| B. | outside; |
| | C. | outside; even |
| | D. | outside, even |
|
|
|
Notice how choices B, C, and D all give you the option
of combining two sentences into one. That should give you a good
clue as to what’s required. The variation between the last three
choices occurs in punctuation. If you agree that A is incorrect,
you can rely on your punctuation skills to decipher the correct
answer. The answer, by the way, is D because B and
C, with their use of the semicolon, continue to isolate the sentence
fragment from the sentence.
Other sentence fragment questions on the English Test
will ask you to turn a fragment into its own full sentence rather
than simply to incorporate it into a different sentence. Again,
you’ll be able to tell from the answer choices what the ACT writers
want:
|
| We didn’t go outside. | While the | rain continued |
| | 18 | |
|
18. | F. | NO CHANGE |
| G. | Although the |
| | H. | The |
| | J. | Since the |
|
|
|
Answers F, G, and J don’t solve the sentence fragment
problem. By choosing those, you still end up with a subordinate
clause posing as a sentence (G and J simply replace one subordinating
conjunction with another). But by getting rid of the subordinating
conjunction altogether, you form a real sentence: “The rain continued
to fall.” The correct answer is H.
Most sentence fragments on the English Test will be subordinate
or dependent clauses trying to be complete sentences. By studying
your subordinate and dependent clauses and learning what they look
like, you’ll be able to catch them committing sentence fragment crime.
Comma Splices
The ACT writers may test your ability to weed out illegal
comma splices. A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses
are joined together by a comma with no intervening conjunction.
For example,
Bowen walked to the park, Leah followed
behind. |
The comma between “park” and “Leah” forms a comma splice.
Although the sentence may sound correct because the comma
demands a short pause between the two related clauses, the
structure is wrong in written English. Instead, two sentences are
necessary:
Bowen walked to the park. Leah followed
behind. |
Or, if you explicitly want to show the relationship between
the clauses, you can write:
Bowen walked to the park, while Leah
followed behind.
OR
Bowen walked to the park, and Leah followed
behind. |
Inserting “while” subordinates the “Leah” clause to the
“Bowen” clause. In the second sentence, the “and” joins the two
clauses on equal footing.
Think about the comma splice in construction terms: the
comma (a wimpy nail) is too weak a punctuation mark to join together
two independent clauses (two big heavies). In order to join them,
you have to add a conjunction (super glue) to the comma or use a
period (a bolt) instead.
Run-on Sentences
You can think of run-on sentences as comma splices minus
the commas. For example:
Joan runs every day she is preparing
for a marathon.
John likes to walk his dog through the park Kevin doesn’t. |
To fix run-on sentences, you need to identify where they
should be split. The first example should be broken into two parts:
“Joan runs every day” and “she is preparing for a marathon.” These
are two independent clauses that can stand on their own as sentences:
Joan runs every day. She
is preparing for a marathon. |
Alternatively, you may choose to show the relationship
between these sentences by subordinating one to the other:
Joan runs every day because she
is preparing for a marathon. |
The second example, when split, becomes: “John likes to
walk his dog through the park” and “Kevin doesn’t.” The following
sentences are correct alternatives to the original run-on:
John likes to walk his dog through
the park. Kevin doesn’t.
John likes to walk his dog through the park, but Kevin
doesn’t.
John likes to walk his dog through the park; however, Kevin
doesn’t. |
These are just a few ways you can join the two clauses.
We could go on and on, showing different relationships between the
two clauses (but we won’t).
Misplaced Modifiers
Does the following sentence sound odd to you?
Having eaten six corn dogs, nausea
overwhelmed Jane. |
Nausea didn’t eat six corn dogs. Gluttonous Jane did.
However, the sentence above says that nausea was the one “having
eaten six corn dogs.” This is a case of a misplaced modifier. When
you have a modifier like “having eaten six corn dogs,” it must come
either directly before or directly after the word that it is modifying.
Having eaten six corn dogs, Jane
was overwhelmed by nausea.
Jane, having eaten six corn dogs, was
overwhelmed by nausea. |
These two sentences make it clear that Jane was the one
wolfing down the corn dogs.
Modifiers are not necessarily phrases like the one above.
They can be adverbial phrases, adverbial clauses, or single-word
adverb modifiers. You’ve already seen how adverbial-phrase modifiers
work in the example above. The simple rule for phrase modifiers
is to make sure phrase modifiers are next to the word(s)
they modify. The same rule applies to clause modifiers.
Misplaced clause modifiers look like this:
Bill packed his favorite clothes in
his suitcase, which he planned to wear on vacation. |
Now do you really think this guy is planning to wear his
suitcase on vacation? Well, that’s what the sentence says. It’ll
be a pretty heavy outfit too, since the suitcase is packed with clothes.
If Bill decides to wear his clothes instead of his suitcase, you
should say:
Bill packed his favorite clothes,
which he planned to wear on vacation, in his suitcase. |
Of course, he’ll be a slightly more conventional dresser,
but the clothes will probably fit better than the suitcase.
The placement of single-word adverbs is slightly trickier
than that of clause and phrase modifiers. You need to make sure
that adverb modifiers (such as just, almost, barely, even, and nearly)
are modifying the word you intend them to modify. If they aren’t,
the sentence will probably still make sense, but it will have a
different meaning than you intended.
Take the sentence “Jay walked a half hour to the grocery
store.” Now add to that sentence the adverbial modifier “only.”
The placement of “only” within the sentence will alter the meaning
of the sentence:
Only Jay walked a
half hour to the grocery store. |
The sentence above means that no one but Jay made the
walk.
Jay only walked a
half hour to the grocery store. |
Here, “only” modifies the verb “walked,” and the sentence
means that Jay did nothing but walk—he didn’t run, and he didn’t
swim—to the store.
Jay walked only a half hour to
the grocery store. |
Hey, the walk to the grocery store isn’t too bad. According
to the sentence above, it took Jay only a half hour to get there.
Jay walked a half hour to only
the grocery store. |
Now we find out that Jay’s single destination was the
grocery store (and we were about to accuse him of having ulterior
motives for taking that walk).
Parallelism
When you see a list underlined on the English Test, look
for a parallelism error. Parallelism errors occur when items in
a list are mismatched. For example, if you have a list of verbs, then
all items in the list must be verbs of the same tense. For example,
WRONG: In the pool
area, there is no spitting, no running,
and don’t throw your
cigarette butts in the water. |
The first two forbidden activities end in “ing” (they’re
called gerunds, though that doesn’t really matter), and because
of that, the third activity must also end in “ing”.
RIGHT: In the pool
area, there is no spitting, no running,
and no throwing your
cigarette butts in the water. |
By simply converting the final verb to gerund form, you
have parallel structure. Parallelism is also important when you
have expressions linked by the verb to be. Because
you should think of to be as an equal sign, the
words on either side of the sign must be parallel. For example:
WRONG: To grow tired
of London is growing tired of life.
RIGHT: To grow tired of London is to
grow tired of life.
WRONG: Growing tired of London is to
grow tired of life.
RIGHT: Growing tired of London is growing tired
of life. |
The examples above are not parallel when the verb forms
are different on either side of “is.” You can make them parallel
by simply changing the form of one verb to the form of the other.
If you have a list of nouns, you must also maintain parallel
construction. For example,
The personal ad said that she likes
“books, good food, and to
take long walks on the beach.” |
She apparently doesn’t like parallelism.
“Books” and “food” are nouns, but “to take” is a verb infinitive.
If she’s hoping to get a call from the grammarian of her dreams,
she should rewrite her ad to look like this:
The personal ad said that she likes
“books, good food, and long walks on
the beach.” |
Now that’s one grammatically correct lady.
