How to Build Sentences

Most people easily learn how to build simple sentences. The basics of every sentence is a subject, or a person or object doing an action, and a predicate, which is the action and any other descriptors. For example, ‘Katie swims.’ is a complete simple sentence. The subject is ‘Katie’ and her action is ‘swims’.

Now imagine if all writing contained only simple sentences. More complicated ideas and messages would never be able to be relayed. Every writer needs to be able to create more complex sentences in order to convey complex ideas. Building those kinds of sentences can be more difficult.

One way to do this is to use embedding, which occurs by inserting information into a sentence in order to give more detail or a clearer message. Sentence embedding expands your sentences to create fuller ideas and better communication. There are many methods for sentence embedding, but let’s look at three common methods.

Combining Modifiers

Sometimes sentence embedding can come from combining modifiers. Modifiers are words that clarify or describe nouns, adjectives or verbs. When you combine modifiers in your sentences, you are adding words from one sentence that describe or modify words in another sentence.

Let’s look at an example of how to do this type of embedding. Look at these two sentences:

• Baseball leagues are very profitable.
• Football leagues are very profitable.

These two sentences have similar messages, but one is about baseball and the other, football. The only difference is the modifier ‘football’ describing the type of league in the second sentence. To embed this, put the two modifiers together to make one complex sentence:

• Baseball and football leagues are very profitable.

Sometimes you can also add in modifiers in other places in the sentence. For example, look at these two sentences:

• Video game sales have grown exponentially.
• Video game sales have grown recently.

‘Exponentially’ and ‘recently’ are modifiers describing the verb ‘grown’. To create one expanded sentence, you can simply input one of the modifiers into the other sentence.

• Video game sales have recently grown exponentially.

Note that, in this case, the modifiers can be placed in more than one spot. For example,

• Recently, video game sales have grown exponentially.

is also an acceptable sentence.

Combining Sentences

The second way to expand sentences consists of combining whole sentences. Sometimes, due to the construct of the sentence, you cannot easily insert one or two words into one of the sentences to embed ideas. In this case, you can put two whole sentences together. There are two ways of combining two complete sentences.

The first is to use a comma and conjunction. Remember, a conjunction is a word that connects words or phrases. ‘And’, ‘but’, and ‘or’ are conjunctions. Let’s look at these two sentences to see how to use a comma and conjunction:

• Katie swims at her school every day.
• She has won several competitions.

Since these two sentences are closely related, we can combine them by inserting a comma and a conjunction:

• Katie swims at her school every day, and she has won several competitions.

The second way to combine these sentences is to insert a semicolon. Semicolons connect two complete sentences to show close relationships.

• Katie swims at her school every day; she has won several competitions.

Be sure to note that the second sentence is not capitalized when using a semicolon.

Adding Phrases

A final method of sentence embedding involves adding a phrase to the original sentence. A phrase is a group of words that have meaning. Phrases are not complete sentences. For example, let’s look at the same two sentences from earlier:

• Katie swims at her school every day.
• She has won several competitions.

We can embed a phrase to a second sentence to include the information from the first.

• Katie, who swims at her school every day, has won several competitions.

In this version, we have used commas to insert a phrase into the sentence. The phrase is not essential to the sentence – ‘Katie has won several competitions.’ – is a perfectly fine sentence. The phrase merely adds more detail to the main idea. It is important to note that when embedding phrases, be sure to set off the phrase with commas.

Lesson Summary

To review, sentence embedding involves expanding sentences to include more detail and make for more professional writing. In this lesson, we have learned three methods for sentence embedding.

The first was combining modifiers. Modifiers are words that describe nouns, adjectives or verbs. Sometimes you can embed modifiers from a second sentence into the original sentence to make it more complex. For example, these two sentences:

• Baseball leagues are very profitable.

and

• Football leagues are very profitable.

can be combined by adding the modifier ‘football’ into the first sentence.

• Baseball and football leagues are very profitable.

The second method for embedding involves combining two complete sentences. In order to do this, you can either insert a comma and a conjunction or insert a semicolon. For example, the two sentences:

• Katie swims at her school every day.
• She has won several competitions.

can become

• Katie swims at her school every day, and she has won several competitions.

or

• Katie swims at her school every day; she has won several competitions.

Lastly, adding phrases can embed sentences. Phrases are groups of words with meaning but are not complete sentences. For example, we can add the phrase ‘who swims at her school every day’ to the sentence ‘Katie has won several competitions.’ Which will become

• Katie, who swims at her school every day, has won several competitions.

The key is to remember to also add commas before and after the embedded phrase.

Use these three methods of sentence embedding to make your writing more complex and mature.