PJ Grammar

Introduction: This page contains some basic information about sentence structure (syntax) and sentence types. It also includes examples of common sentence problems in written English. ESL students who understand the information on this page and follow the advice have a better chance of writing well. [Note to teachers/advanced students] [Presentation mode] Definition: Linguists have problems in agreeing how to define the word sentence. For this web page, sentence will be taken to mean: 'a sequence of words whose first word starts with a capital letter and whose last word is followed by an end punctuation mark (period/full stop or question mark or exclamamtion mark)'. On the basis of this definition, some of the sentences written by ESL students (indeed by all writers) will be correct, and other sentences will be problematic. Good readers (teachers, for example!) can quickly see the difference between a correct and a problematic sentence. Subject/predicate: All sentences are a...