Sentence Combining And Sentence Variety[1]

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SENTENCE COMBINING/SENTENCE VARIETY One mark of good writing is sentence variety. Practice the following techniques and try to use them as you revise. 1. One way to vary sentences is by rearranging the words. Descriptive words, for example, can be placed in front of nouns. Instead of writing three sentences--The problem required a solution. The problem was knotty. The solution had to be immediate.--you could write one: The knotty problem required an immediate solution. Combine the following sentences into one by rearranging and eliminating words (by placing adjectives in front of nouns as above): A breeze floated in from the ocean. The breeze was humid. The ocean was calm. 1a. ____________________________________________________________ ___________________ 2. Another approach is to move adverbs or prepositional phrases to the front of the sentence. The adverb at the end of this sentence--He called me yesterday.--could be moved to the front: Yesterday, he called me. The prepositional phrase at the end of this sentence--He called me at noon.--could be moved to the front: At noon, he called me. In 2a below, write your own sentence with an adverb at the beginning. In 2b below, write your own sentence with a prepositional phrase at the beginning. 2a.____________________________________________________________ ___________________ 2b.____________________________________________________________ ___________________ 3. An easy, but sometimes overused, way to combine sentences is with a comma and conjunction: and, but, or, for, so, yet, nor. This will give you a compound sentence. Instead of two sentences--I could not see any pedestrians. I drove through the intersection. --you could write a compound sentence: I could not see any pedestrians, so I drove through the intersection. In these sentences--Mary works hard. She always gets high marks.--you could omit

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