Provide some guidelines to construct effective sentences.

Guidelines to construct effective sentences

(i) SENTENCES SHOULD CONTAIN ONLY ONE IDEA: Sentences that contain more than one idea weaken the message. Too many ideas expressed without a pause tend to run together in the reader’s mind.

(ii) SENTENCES SHOULD CONTAIN ONE COMPLETE THOUGHT: A group of words that gives merely part of an idea is a sentence fragment. Because a sentence must express one complete thought, a sentence fragment is not a sentence. A fragment splits one thought into two parts.

(iii) SENTENCES SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE ACTIVE VOICE: Effective writing creates force through the use of action verbs - those used in the active voice rather than the passive voice. In Chapter 1, active and passive voices were defined this way: ACTIVE VOICE The subject of the sentence performs the action described by the verb. PASSIVE VOICE The subject receives the action described by the verb.

(iv) SENTENCES SHOULD BE GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT: Basic English errors in sentences may make the receiver think the sender is ignorant or careless - or both. What is good English, and what are the rules of good. English? The “rules” are actually general agreements among the users of English on how to use the language for various purposes in various circumstances. Your goal as a successful communicator, is to use the rules followed by the majority of skilled writers and Speakers in the business world.

(v) SENTENCES SHOULD BE PUNCTUATED CORRECTLY: Commas are perhaps the most troublesome of all punctuation marks. Placing commas incorrectly or otherwise misusing them may cause the meaning of sentences to be unclear. The reader may then need to reread sentences several times to understand the intended meaning.

Commas are misused in three ways:

(a) They are omitted where they are needed.

(b) They are inserted where they are not needed

(c) They are misplaced within the sentence. In each case the reader's understanding is usually hindered. One common mistake is to omit one of a pair of commas.

For example, commas are needed to set off appositives or explanatory expressions. In the following example, the editorial assistant is an appositive, which should be set off by commas. By omitting one of the commas the sentence conveys a different meaning.

(vi) SENTENCES SHOULD BE CONCISE: Concise communication uses as few words as possible to communicate the message in a clear, courteous manner. Whether long or short, a sentence should be concise. Concise is the opposite of words; it is not the opposite of long. If your sentences are concise, the contain no wasted words. You have already learned to avoid needless repetition and to use concise words anti phrases. You know it is important not to use three or four words to express an idea if one or two words express the idea as well. Now continue a step further in the communication building process earn to write concise sentences.

(vii) SENTENCES SHOULD BE VARIED IN LENGTH: For quick, clear, easy reading all sentences should be short and simple, right? Wrong Sentences averaging around 17 words in length are considered about right for fast reading. Good sentences can be longer than 20 words or as short as 4 or 5 words for variety and emphasis. Imagine the monotony of a message in which each sentence is exactly 17 words long. The message might put the reader to sleep! Varying sentence length can enliven writing style. A short sentence placed between two long sentences emphasizes the thought of the short sentence.

(viii) SENTENCES SHOULD BE VARIED IN STRUCTURE: We have already seen that a long string of very short sentences makes for choppy writing, that a sequence of very long sentences makes reading difficult, and that sentences all the same length makes a letter boring to read. Another shortcoming that affects the reader's reaction is identically constructed sentences. A series of sentences having the some construction becomes, monotonous and may seem to talk down to the reader. Besides varying the length of your sentences, you should also vary their structure and pattern. One way to achieve variety in your writing is with different sentence beginnings. Since the way you begin a sentence usually determines the pattern for the sentence as a whole, concentrating on the beginnings is a logical way to control sentence patterns. You can also vary the structure of your sentences by utilizing a combination of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex formations.

(ix) SENTENCES SHOULD FIT TOGETHER NATURALLY: Just as the words in a sentence should be arranged for smooth reading, so should the sentences in a message. Each sentence should smoothly follow the previous one and flow naturally to the next one. Similarly, one paragraph should lead naturally to the next paragraph to guide the reader from one central thought or point to the next.