The
Writing Center
SENTENCE VARIETY
Sentence variety makes your writing more interesting to read.
TYPES OF SENTENCES
FRAGMENT: Incomplete sentence. *DO NOT USE IN ACADEMIC WRITING*
Examples:
 Which is why I can’t help you.
 Since the television broke.
 Regardless of what anyone says.
SIMPLE SENTENCE: One complete thought
Examples:
 Potatoes are good for you.
 James counted all the Legos.
COMPOUND SENTENCE: Two complete sentences, connected by a
coordinating conjunction.
Examples:
 The sky was bleak, and rain was imminent.
[complete sentence] [complete sentence]
 Ophelia put on her raincoat, and walked to the park.
[complete sentence]
[complete sentence]
TO REMEMBER COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS, THINK FANBOYS:
◊ For
◊ And
◊ Not
◊ But
◊ Or
◊ Yet
◊ So
COMPLEX SENTENCE: One complete sentence that includes a dependent clause (a clause that cannot stand alone as a
sentence.
Example:
 Juan loved video games, especially role-playing adventures.
[complete sentence + {dependent clause}]
COMPOUND/COMPLEX SENTENCE: Two complete sentences that include at least one dependent clause
Examples:
 Whenever it rained, and that was frequently in her native land, Kara would run outside to splash in the puddles, and
it drove her mother crazy.
 Despite her objections, Dan went to the circus, which exceeded all his expectations, and he decided to run away and
join them so he could work with the elephants.
ALTERNATE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SENTENCES IN A PARAGRAPH:
Example:
I passed all the other courses that I took at my university, but I could never pass botany. This was because all botany students
had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a
microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the
laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of
flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. "I can’t see anything," I would say. He would begin patiently enough,
explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury, claiming that I could too see through a
microscope but just pretended that I couldn’t. "It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway," I used to tell him. "We are not
concerned with beauty in this course," he would say. "We are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flars." "Well,"
I’d say, "I can’t see anything." "Try it just once again," he’d say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all,
except now and again a nebulous milky substance--a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless
clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. "I see what looks like a lot of milk," I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my
not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or rather for himself. And I would look again and see
milk.
From James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times (1933) NY: Harper & Row, 1933, 1999
USE DIFFERENT SENTENCE OPENINGS:
Example: The biggest coincidence of that day was that Sonia and I were seated together at the Springsteen concert.
Imagine my surprise when I sat down at the Springsteen concert to find that Sonia had the seat next to mine.
What are the odds that I would have had a seat right next to Sonia at the Springsteen concert?
Sonia and I, without any prior planning, were seated next to each other at the Springsteen concert.
It was an amazing coincidence that Sonia and I ended up seated next to one another at the Springsteen concert.
Portions adapted from Straus, Jane. The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 2008.