What is a sentence?
We are taught language and grammar from the moment we utter our first word. As we progress, our parents and teachers correct us and we begin to learn the ‘rules’ of language. Unfortunately, for most of us our educations stops at memorizing rules and we fail to grasp why these rules exist and what they are predicated on. While learning the difference between “lay” and “lie” is certainly valuable and important it will not make you a substantially better writer. Owning a publishing company and working as a professional editor made me realize that almost nobody has a has a strong grasp of what a sentence actually is.
Simply put, a sentence is an idea.
That’s it. Philosophers have argued for millennia about whether a sentence is an idea or just the expression of an idea in language, but in common practice they function the same. One idea = one sentence.
Grammar gives ideas shape.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, punctuation and beyond are tools to explore and identify what ideas are about, what happens, how, where and why. Practicing your grammar is really the act of refining of your ideas.
People get tricked up when they write complex sentences. A sentence should only grow in complexity to match the complexity of the idea it is expressing. Punctuation, like commas, colons, semicolons and dashes allow you to express two ideas together; collaging and juxtaposing to create a meaning that otherwise could never be expressed individually.
What makes a sentence overly complex is when the grammar is trying to express more than the idea. What makes a sentence vague is when the idea is too complex for the sentence it has been formed into. When making your sentences always refer back to the idea; do the words and punctuation serve and fully express what you are thinking? Are you really thinking of two ideas and attempting to express them as one? Poor grammar is always the result of the lack of clarity in thought. The first step to being taken seriously as a writer and thinker begins with a sentence.
