English Grammar Rules & Mistakes: Learn All of the Essentials: Writing, Speaking, Literature and Punctuation Rules Complete with 10 Key Skills and Over 200 Common Error Examples

RULE 6 – STRUCTURING SENTENCES WITH
EASE
We have learned about a wide variety of different grammar rules including,
different tenses, punctuation and the basic building blocks. Yet, these rules
don’t mean anything by themselves. To actually write, we have to take
everything that we have learned so far and put it into a sentence. This is what
we are going to achieve in this chapter. It is not a difficult task by any means.
What we must keep in mind is the basics of the rules we have learned so far
and use them in an uncomplicated manner to form simple but effective
sentences. I will cover a range of different sentence structures. By the end of
this chapter you will have strong repertoire of writing structures that you can
roll in any situation.
I could never have imagined that when I turned thirty I would have
the opportunity to become the one thing I had always wanted to be.
This was something I had dreamed about for a long time, finally it
was here, finally I was a mother.
I wanted to show you this example to demonstrate what I mean by overly
complicated sentence structure. It takes a long time to get to the point that the
writer is trying to make. It is also contains a lot of redundant information that
adds very little to the meaning of the two sentences.
When I turned thirty I fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a
mother.
When we rewrite the information to form a concise and well formed
sentence, we get the impact of the meaning immediately, with all redundant
information removed. Many people feel that they want to pack their
sentences with as much emotion as possible, yet this often leads to long and

---

confusing sentences. Don’t underestimate the power of a small well-formed
sentence. Always aim to write in this way.
Before we get to sentences, we must look to phrases and clauses first. This is
going to be a quick overview as I don’t want to weigh you down with the
technical side of sentence structure. You must be aware of the following but
the structuring of sentences is much more important, especially knowing how
to keep them concise and meaningful.
Phrases
A phrase is a group of related words that function together to represent
something. There are different types of phrases which you can identify by
what type of building block word they are using.