Writing Good Sentences in English

Creating good content for other readers is difficult. You want to present your ideas, your thoughts, your passions, but you have to present them in a manner that is direct and straightforward – you want your reader to understand you.

The best way to make sure your writing is good is to look at each sentence when you edit your piece. Ask yourself “is this a good sentence?” You will know the sentence is good if it has these three parts; a subject, a verb, and a predicate.

SUBJECT

The subject tells the reader who or what the sentence is about. Here’s a sentence without a subject:

Ran away.

Who ran away? There is just no way to tell what that sentence is about unless you put it in the sentence – unless you define a subject. The dog ran away. The man ran away. You can also use a pronoun – It ran away – assuming you’ve told us what it represents.

Commands are a little difference. Here’s another sentence without a subject:

Sit down.

In that sentence the subject is implied – we figure you are talking to someone but haven’t named them. You can use sentences like this when you are writing dialog, but not in business writing for the Web.

Always try to use a subject in your sentences.

VERB

The verb is the action word – it tells what the subject did. Here’s a sentence without a verb:

The tree, beautiful and willowy.

What about the tree? Did it fall over? Catch fire?

Every sentence needs to have a verb. A sentence without a verb is not a sentence.

PREDICATE

The predicate is the rest of the sentence, the part that tells the reader the rest of the story. Here’s a sentence without a predicate:

The dog ran.

All by itself that is an acceptable sentence – dogs run all the time. But it can be a better sentence by adding a predicate:

The dog ran away. The dog ran down the street. The dog ran into traffic.

With the addition of a predicate a fair sentence becomes a good one.

The next time you are writing content for the Web, make sure you include these three basics pieces in each and every sentence you write. You’ll find that it is easier to communicate your ideas, and that your writing is getting better.