Introduction to Sentence Grammar

Clear and correct communication is important for all writers, from students to professionals. Whether you are typing an e-mail or writing an essay, you have the responsibility to present your meaning precisely, and to avoid the misunderstandings and distractions that result from incorrectness. Writing in complete sentences is one way to ensure that you communicate well.

Many of the common errors in sentence construction come from problems with one unit of language: clauses. This means that learning to identify and combine clauses correctly is the most effective means of learning correct sentence grammar.

In order to learn about clauses, you must first know how to correctly identify subjects and verbs, and doing that is much more effective after knowing how to identify prepositional phrases. So the beginning of this chapter is arranged according to this skill progression:

1. Prepositional Phrases
2. Subjects and Verbs
3. Clauses and Combining Clauses
4. Common Sentence Errors