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17.1: Developing Sentences that Say Something

  • Page ID
    223574
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    As a college writer, you will be asked to engage with a wide variety of compositional techniques, modes, and conventions as you work to hone a strong academic voice. Along the way, you will be expected to craft your assignments with a clear, conscientious eye toward your audience and the ways in which you might most meaningfully convey your ideas to your audience.

    One way to shape your readers’ relationship to your ideas is through varied, deliberate uses of sentence structure. While you may recall the differences between an interrogative and a declarative sentence, you may be less familiar with the more nuanced structures upon which these others are built. However, you must pay close attention to expressing your ideas at the sentence level before you can effectively assemble the paragraphs that will become your essay.

    Helpful Terms for Review

    Coordinating conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (F.A.N.B.O.Y.S.)

    Independent clause: a word group that includes a subject and a predicate that can stand alone as a sentence

    Dependent clause: a group of words that adds meaning within a sentence but cannot stand as a sentence on its own

    Subordinating term: a word or phrase that connects the dependent clause to another clause, where it acts as an adjective, adverb, or noun


    17.1: Developing Sentences that Say Something is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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