A Military Writer's Handbook
Sentences

Sentences: Introduction

Every writer, however much he or she is gifted with writing skills, can make great improvements in quality of thought and expression by consciously employing some effective methods of structuring a sentence. Indeed, the sentence structures discussed and illustrated here will enable you to express your ideas more concisely, or to put the emphasis on the most important point. Using subordinate and relative clauses, or adding prepositional, infinitive, or participial phrases and the occasional appositivecan lend admirable sophistication, subtlety, and style to your writing, making it more attractive for the reader, and enabling your thought processes as well.

Contents

A sentence
Writing clear sentences
Varying sentence length
Coordination and subordination
Forming relative clauses
Participial phrase openers
Using appositives
Using adjectives
Parallelism and triads
Passive and active voice