Identifying Errors in Sentence Structure

What Is Sentence Structure?

Besides several communication ways, writing is also essential one and used frequently. But a writing with proper sentence structure is considered to be most effective.Sentence structure is used as rule to write the sentence.So, sentence structure is for sentence building.Sentence structure assists in sentence formation and to understand its meaning. Let’s proceed forward for further learning.

Subject Verb Agreement

The first most important part of sentence structure is Subject-verb agreement.

• The person or object that is performing an action is subject.
• A verb is the action.

For istance, in this sentence:

A can of lima beans sits on the shelf.

'Can' is the subject. 'sits' is the action and so is the verb.

In Subject verb agreement the verbs must agree with the subjects. The sentence would be wrong if it read:

A can of lima beans sit on the shelf.

Since 'sit' without an 's' is a form for plural subjects.

The sentence will be incorrect if subject-verb agreement used without sentence clarification. This case would be present in the complex sentence like:

The book and pen that were clawed by the puppy has been thrown out.

Notice the error. 'The book and pen' is the compound subject of this sentence. Here the verb must have plural form. However, the phrase 'that were clawed by the puppy' is an intruding phrase. It makes the agreement difficult to be interpret. 'Has' is a verb but should be changed to 'have' to match the plural subject. Therefore, the sentence should be:

The book and pen that were clawed by the puppy have been thrown out. So, in this way you can detect an error.

Clauses

The 2nd important part of sentence structure is Clause. A Clauses is a part of sentence that contain a single idea. It has 2 parts a subject and a predicate. While writing, it can also cause errors. Now, What is predicate? Yes, predicate is the verb that indicates the task which is performed by a subject.

Types of Clauses

An independent clause has a subject and predicate and can stand alone as a complete sentence. A dependent clause is a clause with a subject and a predicate but cannot stand alone

John was making coffee for her wife.

It is an independent clause as it has a subject, a predicate,that makes full sense. However if a conjunction (a linking word) is used, this would become dependent clause. As, While John was making coffee for her wife.

It is not a complete sentence. It has a subject and predicate but requires an independent clause to give complete sense.

While John was making coffee for her wife, the gas gone.

Adding the independent clause 'the gas gone” makes the sentence meaningful. So, to identify errors within clauses,

• Examine for dependent clauses
• Watch out for conjunctions that might turn an independent clause into a dependent one.

Parallel Structure

The last important part of sentence structure is Parallel Structure.

“It is the consistent format of words and phrases within a sentence.” To brief it we can say that the words and phrases in each sentence should be of identical pattern.

For Example:

In this sentence, patterns are odd to each other. 'To think' is in the infinitive form. But, 'running' is not. Let’s make it parallel:

I do not enjoy thinking or running. OR,

I do not enjoy to think or to run.

Sometimes parallel structure can be larger than a short list. For example: The father told the sons that they should not tell a lie, that they should not break rules, and not to follow evils.

This is a longer sentence, but still needs to be parallel. In this case, “not to follow evils” does not follow the structure of the rest of the sentence. We should write it thus, The father told the sons that they should not tell a lie, that they should not break rules, and that they should not follow evils.

This is all about Parallel Structure.