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Writing well at the sentence level

Combining short and long sentences

Modifiers

Adjectival modifiers

Adjectival clause

Adverbial modifiers

Adverbial clause

Types of phrases

Participle phrase

Prepositional phrase

Absolute phrase

Infinitive phrase

Flowing from one sentence to the next

Contrast

Comparison

Summarise

Emphasise

Addition

Cause and effect – leading to a conclusion

Examples

Sense of time

Sense of position or direction

Sentence fragments

Use of the dash

Infinitive phrase

Often, these phrases are used to tell the reader about something someone is trying to do, and what they need to do to achieve that something:

Jill is going to have to do a lot of training.

becomes

To finish the marathon, Jill is going to have to do a lot of training.

Of course, don’t go over the top with modifiers or modifying phrases. Cramming too many into one sentence and using them in every single sentence isn’t the best idea:

Running quickly through the lush green forest, the tall heavyset man, chest heaving, picked his way carefully around the tall trees by the azure blue river, as the attack helicopter searched ceaselessly for him from above.

It’s just too much of a mouthful. Remember that variety is what you want, so some sentences with modifiers in them is good, but as long as not every single one is weighed down with multiple modifiers.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Flowing from one sentence to the next