Chapter 3
Having It All: Writing Complete Sentences
IN THIS CHAPTER
Making sure your sentence has a subject/verb pair
Avoiding fragments and run-ons
Joining sentences legally for better flow
Placing endmarks that set the tone
Recognizing proper sentences
Did you hear the story about the child who said nothing for the first five years of life and then began to speak in perfect, complete sentences? Supposedly the kid grew up to be something important, like a Supreme Court justice or a CEO. I question the story’s accuracy, but I don’t doubt that Supreme Court justices, CEOs, or anyone else with a good job knows how to write a complete sentence.
You need to know how to do so, too, and in this chapter I give you a complete (pardon the pun) guide to sentence completeness, including how to punctuate and how to combine thoughts using proper grammar. (For more on how to make your combinations stylish, check out Chapter 17.)
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