How to Write a Sentence

1. Liking Sentences is the Foundation of Writing

“Well,” the writer said, “do you like sentences?”

Start with the material. Just as a painter must love the smell of paint, a writer must love sentences. Writing doesn't begin with grand ideas or plots, but with a feel for the fundamental unit of the craft. It's about appreciating the raw material and how it works.

Words need syntax. Words alone are just discrete items; they gain power and meaning only when placed in the slots ordained by syntax. Syntax provides the structure, the ligatures of relationships, that allow words to combine into a statement about the world. This combination carves out shape and meaning.

Become a sentence watcher. Develop an appreciation for fine sentences, wherever you find them. Marvel at their construction, read them aloud, analyze how they achieve their effects. This admiration is the starting point for understanding and eventually creating powerful sentences yourself.

2. Forget Grammar Rules, Focus on Logical Relationships

Technical knowledge, divorced from what it is supposed to be knowledge of, yields only the illusion of understanding.

Rules are often unhelpful. Traditional grammar guides, like Strunk and White, offer rules about clauses, subjects, and verbs that are meaningless if you don't already understand the underlying structure. Memorizing parts of speech or error lists is merely taxonomic and doesn't teach you how sentences actually work. It can even cause anxiety.

Focus on core logic. Instead of abstract rules, understand that a sentence is fundamentally a structure of logical relationships. There's a doer, an action, and often an object being acted upon (X does Y to Z). Other words and phrases provide information about these core components, like when, where, or how.

One error to avoid. If you grasp the finite nature of these logical relationships, you realize there's only one real error: being illogical. Ensure every part of your sentence clearly and unambiguously links to another part within this logical structure. Ask yourself, "What does this go with?"

3. A Sentence Organizes the World Through Relationships

A sentence is, in John Donne’s words, “a little world made cunningly.”

Sentences create order. Language doesn't just report reality; it organizes it into manageable, artificial units. A sentence takes disparate items and relates them to one another in terms of time, space, cause, effect, and more, forming a coherent statement or "little world."

Relationships are key. The distinctive feature of a sentence's organization is its logical structure, built on relationships like subject-verb-object. These relationships tie words together, giving them function and meaning within the whole. Without them, words remain a random list.

Finite relationships, infinite content. While the possible contents of sentences are endless, the fundamental logical relationships that make sentences possible are limited. Understanding these core relationships is the key to building any sentence, regardless of its complexity or subject matter.

4. Mastering Form Unlocks the Possibility of Content

Despite the familiar proverb, it’s not the thought that counts.

Form precedes content. To learn how to compose sentences, focus on mastering the forms first. Content is the ultimate goal, but you can't express it effectively without command of the structures that make meaning possible. Think of it like practicing scales before playing music.

Practice with nonsense. Working with sentences that have minimal or no inherent meaning, like Chomsky's "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" or Carroll's "Jabberwocky," forces you to focus purely on the structural slots and relationships. This isolates the formal knowledge needed for sentence building.

Forms are generative. Familiarizing yourself with formal structures, whether sentence logic or rhetorical templates like "They Say/I Say," is the road to invention. These forms don't just arrange pre-existing thoughts; they prompt you to make moves and generate content you wouldn't have otherwise conceived.

5. Practice Building and Analyzing Sentence Structures

Sentence craft equals sentence comprehension equals sentence appreciation.

Develop a sixth sense. Practice exercises that hone your sensitivity to sentence structure. Start by making sentences out of random word lists and explaining the relationships you created. This builds an internalized grammatical sense that helps you spot and fix problems.

Expand simple sentences. Take a basic three-word sentence (e.g., "John hit ball") and expand it into increasingly longer, more complex sentences (15, 30, 100 words). The challenge is to maintain the core logical structure while adding modifying words, phrases, and clauses.

Analyze your work. After expanding, analyze how each added component functions within the sentence's overall structure. Identify what it modifies, supports, or refers to. This reflective step deepens your understanding of how complex sentences are built and held together.

6. Sentence Style Depends on Context and Purpose

The first thing to ask when writing a sentence is “What am I trying to do?”

Style shapes reality. Language doesn't just mirror reality; it shapes it by imposing one of many possible orders. Every sentence is a selection, leaving out more than it includes, and the choices made reflect a perspective or emphasis tied to the writer's purpose.

Purpose dictates form. A "good" sentence isn't inherently good; its effectiveness is measured by how well it achieves the desired effect in a specific context. Prescriptive rules about sentence length or structure are only useful for certain purposes, not all.

Choose your style. You cannot avoid style; you can only choose which one to employ. Different styles, like Cicero's grand, middle, and plain, or the subordinating and additive styles, project distinct personalities and ways of seeing the world. Knowing these options allows you to make strategic choices.

7. The Subordinating Style Builds Controlled Complexity

...when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Order and hierarchy. The subordinating style (hypotaxis) arranges clauses and phrases in dependent relationships, signaling causality, temporality, and importance. It creates a sense of planning, order, and control, guiding the reader through a carefully constructed argument or description.

Delayed gratification. This style often delays the main assertion, building tension and freighting the conclusion with accumulated meaning. Parenthetical remarks or long dependent clauses suspend completion, creating anticipation and impact when the sentence finally resolves.

Masterful control. Sentences in this style, like those by James, Melville, King, or Milton, demonstrate a mind fully in command of its material and message. They perform the very control they announce, leading the reader down a path that feels both intricate and inevitable.

8. The Additive Style Creates Spontaneity and Flow

I write naturally and without a plan; the first stroke of the pen just leads to a second.

Appearance of artlessness. The additive style (parataxis) connects clauses with minimal ligatures like "and," "but," or "or," giving an impression of spontaneity, association, and unpredictable movement. It eschews obvious formal structure to mimic the flow of thought or experience.

Emphasis on moments. Unlike the subordinating style that builds towards a conclusion, the additive style gives relatively equal weight to successive clauses. Each unit carries strong emphasis, creating a sense of immediacy and allowing meaning to emerge moment by moment rather than being deferred.

Artful imitation. While appearing natural or haphazard, this style is no less artful than the subordinating style. Masters like Montaigne, Sterne, Salinger, Stein, and Hemingway carefully craft this effect of looseness and association. It requires knowing the rules of subordination in order to deliberately depart from them.

9. Satiric Style Uses Form for Cutting Critique

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse.

Attack through indirection. Satire attacks vice or folly using irony, derision, or wit, often delivering its sting in stages. It doesn't always state its critique directly, allowing the reader to grasp the devastating point through tone and juxtaposition.

Surface vs. depth. Satiric sentences often employ a deadpan or mild surface tone that contrasts sharply with the horror or absurdity beneath. This disparity highlights the speaker's (or society's) warped perspective and invites the reader to recoil from it.

Formal precision for impact. Masters of satire use formal devices—like unexpected turns, parenthetical asides, or carefully chosen ambiguous words—to slow down or redirect the reader, ensuring the full weight of the critique lands precisely where intended. The form is integral to the venom.

10. First Sentences Lean Forward and Set Expectations

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses.

Promissory notes. First sentences are not standalone units; they are prefaces that look forward to the thematic concerns and developments that will follow. They have an "angle of lean," inclining the reader toward the unfolding world of the text.

Establishing mood or plot. First sentences draw readers in by hinting at plot, sketching character, establishing mood, or posing a central question or argument. They equip the reader with specific expectations about the story or ideas to come.

Compression and resonance. Effective first sentences communicate a surprising amount of information or feeling in a brief space. They are resonant because they anticipate everything that follows, setting the stage for the entire narrative or argument.

11. Last Sentences Provide Closure or Lingering Effect

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Concluding the journey. Last sentences shut down the engine of the text, inheriting the reader's accumulated interest. They can sum up, refuse summation, shift perspective, or leave a lasting impression that resonates beyond the final word.

Elegiac or impactful. Often elegiac, last sentences benefit from the reader's fondness for the work they are leaving. The best ones rise to the occasion, providing a sense of resolution, a powerful image, or a final thought that encapsulates the work's core themes.

Formal devices for finality. Last sentences use formal devices—like alliteration, shifts in tense, or carefully chosen final words—to achieve their effect of closure or lingering ambiguity. They are crafted to feel definitive, even when they point to unresolved tensions or endless cycles.

12. Sentences Can Be About Their Own Form and Limits

What is Truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Self-conscious composition. Some sentences make their own composition or the nature of language itself their explicit subject. They meditate on their ability (or inability) to capture reality, express truth, or transcend their own formal limitations.

Performing their message. These sentences often perform the very action or state they describe. A sentence about the difficulty of expression might be convoluted; one about transcendence might strain against grammatical bounds; one about evasion might shift responsibility.

Form as content. In these self-reflexive sentences, the distinction between form and content dissolves. The way the sentence is built is its meaning, inviting the reader to appreciate not just what is said, but the act of saying it and the inherent properties or limits of language being explored.

Last updated: May 19, 2025