A grammatically complete sentence has a subject and a conjugated verb, as in Mary sang. A sentence is also an independent clause. If a group of words qualifies only as a dependent clause, it is not a sentence, as in Because we were tired. Many writers use incomplete sentences in their writing. These are technically known as sentence fragments. They might also be called typographical sentences, a group of words beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period. If you use typographical sentences in your style, make certain it is immediately evident that you know what you're doing and that you're not making a mistake. And point out to your supervisor that great writers often use these structures. So there.
The four kinds of verbs enable us to write four basic types of complete sentences:
Four Possible Sentence Types
| 1A | Subject (Actor) John | + | Transitive Verb in the active voice hit | + | Direct Object (Recipient) the ball. |
| 1B | Subject (Recipient) The ball | + | Transitive Verb in the passive voice was hit | + | Actor Phrase (Actor) by John. |
| 2 | Subject John | + | Intransitive Verb ran | + | Phrase to first base. |
| 3 | Subject John | + | Verb to be is | + | Predicate Noun the batter. |
| John | is | + | Predicate Adjective strong. | ||
| John | is | + | Phrase at the plate. | ||
| 4 | Subject John | + | Linking Verb seems | + | Predicate Noun the team leader. |
| John | appears | + | Predicate Adjective quick. | ||
| John | sounds | + | Phrase out of sorts. |
That's it, folks. Every English sentence falls into one of these categories, which vary with the type of verb chosen.
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