Sentence Structure Errors

Lots of the error patterns we've treated here are small things, relatively easy to identify and even to change. But the most significant errors developing writers make aren't about surface patterns like noun-verb agreement or how to mark possessives.

They're about the deep structure of sentences, how phrases and clauses fit together.

There are rules about these structures, of course -- how to construct an about which clause or where you can insert an -ing verb to describe what somebody in your sentence is doing when the action of the sentence takes place (what people call a participial phrase). But they aren't rules anybody writes down or commits to conscious memory. They're rules you know intuitively, just by virtue of having heard, spoken, read, and written lots and lots of sentences before now.

So addressing them is much more about a holistic kind of practice with sentences -- about developing what linguists call fluency -- than it is about the conscious correction of a fixed number of patterns.

Mina Shaughnessy

It's worth noting that some people have tried, through a kind of heroic effort, to enumerate and categorize these patterns, and that work is helpful for teachers. Mina Shaughnessy, for example, famous for her work with underprepared writers at the City University of New York in the 1970s, when CUNY experimented with open admissions, painstakingly catalogued the sorts of sentence structure errors she encountered in her book Errors and Expectations.

Here are some examples of the kind of sentence stucture errors she found:

...a young person could get an increase his knowledge about the world. (Shaughnessy 45)

According to his statement which projects there are more jobs available without college, was very obvious to me before enrolling. (Shaughnessy 45)

It is my belief that what you do you should be praised for it. (Shaughnessy 68)

The things they want you to know you do not know this in high school. (Shaughnessy 68)

Society has set up certain limits of education which every citizen has to meet their standards. (Shaughnessy 64)

It was great to learn Staniflovsky’s method which I know I just spelled his name wrong. (Shaughnessy 63)

There aren't any clear or simple rules you can cite to "fix" what's wrong in these sentence. But you can probably think of ways to reimagine each of them, to play with their pieces in order to make them fall more naturally into place. That's the work that needs to be done with sentence structure errors.

So How Do You Do This?

If the bad news about sentence structure errors is that there aren't simple fix-it procedures to follow, the good news from our perspective is that working on them is both based on your own intellectual preferences and learning style and -- if you approach it in the right spirit -- kind of fun: it's about learning to play with sentences.

Think of sentences not as a place to screw up and lose points, but as a creation of your own, one you can tinker with and kind of zhuzh up as you go along. Basically, don't be afraid to play with the way you form and present your ideas.

So, in that spirit:

Consider sentence-combining exercises. One way to practice building sentences of a variety of sorts is through what people call sentence-combining exercises. Start with really simple sentences and phrases, just like three or four words. Then combine them in all the different ways you can think of, integrating an idea as an adjective clause, then as a participial phrase, and then as a series of simple adjectives. This will build your intutive sense of the range of ways it's possible to construct a sentence. It will expand your repertoire as a writer.

Read a lot. Find what you like and absorb its rhythms. Recognize that the language you find may not be appropriate for all contexts (see our discussion of register), but the more language you absorb the more you'll be able to adjust to different contexts and registers.

Read like a writer. As you read, give attention to sentences as potential models. Write down sentences you like, and practice writing others that follow their basic structure and rhythm. Don't use the same words, of course -- just the forms and patterns.

Practice rephrasing. As you draft -- or better, after you draft, as you're combing through and revising what you have on the page -- take some time to experiment with the sentences you have. Are there ways to reimagine them that might be more effective? We recommend copying what you've written and pasting in a second version to rework so that you can always go back to the original.

Find a cooperative reader-editor you work well with. Ask a friend, a classmate, a peer tutor at the Writing Center, your instructor (if they have time), or someone else. But a reader-editor may well imagine alternative structures you haven't. And of course, make note of readers you work well with to continue to work with in the future.

Don't Worry About Getting it Wrong

One of Shaughnessy's best-known insights had to do with the psychology behind these kinds of errors. She said that they were the product in part of a kind of internalized editorial instinct, even self-surveillance. Having had their sentences so frequently corrected and rewritten in the past -- often in an unceremoniously disapproving spirit -- many writers feel reluctant to attempt anything but the simplest sorts of sentences. And even then, they often get anxious that they'll get something wrong, stop in the middle of a sentence "paralyze[d]" (10), abandon it, and start over.

Her book includes drafts that demonstrate this process, with some writers restarting sentences ten or twelve times, unable ever to quite finish them.

Try to work against this instinct. Don't shy away from attempting unfamiliar sentence forms that may seem complicated out of worry that you'll say something wrong, and don't be afraid to follow your instincts about how to work through them once you get started. You'll have plenty of time to go back and reread, after a draft is done, in order to rethink whatever sentences seem awkward or confusing.