A sentence is an act. It does something,
goes somewhere, makes something happen. We can see this clearly when we
compare a sentence that doesn't work with one that does.
"In my opinion it is necessary that a rock
situation be set up in front of the house so that the floodwaters of the
river will be prevented from coming into the house and ruining the private
property of the people that live in it.
But it is impossible to remember the drunken face
of McCarthy, merry often with a kind of worldly malice, as if he were
mocking those who took him seriously, and believe that he himself could take
seriously anything but his boozed-up nightmares."
--Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time, p. 37
Both of these sentences are grammatically correct, but
the first one seems blanked out, its author numb and mechanized, setting the
words down to get them over with. In Hellman's sentence, by contrast, we feel
that the writer is interested, involved, energized by what she says.
Her sentence is long, but it is unified; the words
"drunken" and "boozed-up" give it a head and a tail, and
the tail has a sting. So it isn't just grammar which marks the difference
between a good and a bad sentence; it's the author's sense of making an act,
getting something across - a message, an image, an order - and of not trailing
along behind it, but leading it forward.
Sentence
Fragments
Comma
Splices
Run-on
Sentences
Dangling
or Misplaced Modifiers
Subject-Verb
Agreement
Split
Infinitives
Which,
That, It, and Of
Semi-colons
and Colons
Apostrophes
His
and Her
