Varying Your Sentence Structures
There are a variety of ways to make your writing sound fresh and dynamic. Varying the types of sentences you use is probably the simplest. In fact, it’s the one technique we recommend beginning writers to immediately employ.
In the English language, there are four basic types of sentences, each one featuring different levels of complexity. Sticking to one type for the duration (even the majority) of a piece is the shortest route to making sure that your writing is particularly boring. Even if your grammar checker approves, your reader probably wouldn’t.
Simple Sentences: Consisting of one subject and one verb, it’s the most basic sentence structure in the English language. Beginner-level ESL speakers will likely be restricted to this type of sentence construction. You don’t want to look like you have hat level of facility with the English vernacular, do you?
Compound Sentences: Put two independent clauses together, linked logically by either a coordinating conjunction (such as “for,” “and” and “yet”) or a conjunctive adverb (such as “therefore,” “however” and “for instance”), and you’ve got a compound sentence. Two simple sentences (provided they are related) can easily be converted into a compound one to immediately vary usage in your paragraphs.
Complex Sentences: When you put together two clauses, one of them being dependent on the other, you’ve got a complex sentence. Identifying a dependent clause is the trick here – they usually begin with words that show the dependency, such as “which,” “when” and “because.”
Compound/Complex Sentences: This is the motherload of sentence structure, consisting of two or more independent clauses, along with one or more dependent clauses.