BY TERRI WAGNER
It’s grammar time at the X, and we were challenged to write about the issues that plague us the most—probably hoping we would learn ourselves and be able to pass that along to others. So here goes.
Basic sentence structure gets creamed in today’s writing. And if you follow the rules we all understand them, you will end up with very simple sentences. So what’s that basic structure? A noun and a verb. Or as they say, subject and predicate. That is news to me, how about you?
I guess they use subject instead of noun because a pronoun can also be a subject but is closely related to a noun. Okay, my head is aching already. Can anything else be a subject? Why yes . . . you can have invisible subjects. For example, “Call the plumber, please.” The implied, invisible subject is—tada!—“you.” And we are just on the subject of a sentence. Yikes.
The predicate (or verb) expresses the subject’s action state of being. It can be action as in “He ran away,” or state of being as in “You are here.” Got that? Good, let’s move on.
Subjects can be modified by adjectives, be plural with the “and,” or as we have already discussed invisible. They can be clauses that “contain” the subject. And they can be independent clauses joined by a conjunctive words. I’m already confused how about you?
Predicates can be modified by other verbs but not by adjectives. Yes, there can be plural verbs, and they can also be contained in a clause. They do not have to follow the subject thus rendering them oddly placed in a sentence. Got that?
Finally, there is the truest way to figure out sentence composition: the diagram. It’s something they are coming back to doing in school these days. I took English 101 in college like every good Freshman does. My final was to diagram the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. I aced it. Couldn’t fathom how to do it today. For kicks, here’s a place you can find the diagram:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/diagrams2/preamble.htm
A simple sentence composition is an art with some scientific rules thrown in for good measure. I suspect we can use a brush up on something we may think we know very well.
Good luck. I may stick with “He ran. It was a sight to see.” At least I would know I was grammatically correct!
Terri tears her hair out diagraming sentences from her home in Alabama. She currently spearheads two projects: Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia, a Steampunk adventure by Pete Ford, and Shades and Shadows: A Paranormal Anthology, both slated for release in October, 2013.
