Whether you’re writing an essay or an e-mail, sentences are the building blocks of any piece of writing. They convey ideas, ask questions, make statements, pose arguments, express requests or commands and more. But sentences aren’t just any collection of words thrown together—they must follow a certain word order that makes sense and carries meaning.
In a sentence, the subject—with or without a determiner—comes first, followed by the verb. A subject may be singular or plural and can be a noun, pronoun, or prepositional phrase. A subject can also be a clause, which is a group of words that functions as a unit in a sentence and includes a subject and verb.
A sentence can have one independent clause or multiple independent clauses and can be declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamatory. The verb in a sentence must agree with its subject in number, person, and case. It can also be an infinitive, which doesn’t change tense—for example, “to wait” or “to read.”
In a sentence, adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. Adjectives often end in -ly to add detail about a noun or verb—for example, green describes the sweater and beautiful describes Iris. Similarly, adverbs describe actions—for example, he sings horribly. Some adverbs are regular and can be used as-is; others have different forms for singular and plural subjects or for present, past, and future tense. To form a superlative, you simply replace the regular form of the adverb with -est—for example, big becomes biggest and fast becomes fastest.
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