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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.