Cheatsheet: build a sentence

We cannot separate the content of a sentence from its form, its meaning, its style

For travelers: “Pay attention to the punches, and the pounds take care of themselves”

For writers: “Pay attention to the sentences, and most other writing problems take care of themselves”

Readers and value

Clear, concise, comprehensible, sentences that mean something to them.

“What’s important to my Reader?” not just, “What will get his attention”. The answer, the value, becomes the main point of the sentence

Main point and peripheral Info

Mindset of all the distinct pieces of information in the sentence

Don’t cram too much

Consider what you can do without

Phrases

Look for the headword

Modifiers

Attached to the correct element of the sentence

Relative Clauses

  • An adjective with a subject and a word

  • Headed by a relative pronoun

  • Tells us something about the antecedent

  • Squeeze information from sentences into an adjective. Good - but when fits

Adverbial

  • Legit way to modify the target constiteuent

  • Add info that does not derived from the modified itself

  • Seek first for specific verb that conveys the meaning directly

Time

Associate time elements with specific action

Auxiliary verbs

  • Tense → When?

  • Aspect → How does the event unfold in time?

  • Voice → Who is presented as the subject?

  • Modality → What is the speaker’s stance toward the proposition (possibility, necessity, prediction, obligation, etc.)?

Tense, aspect of future

Correct verb from

Tensed clauses

  • Tensed matrix clause → “This is what I am asserting.”

  • Tensed subordinate clause → “This is another situation relevant to my assertion.”

  • Tenseless subordinate clause → “This is supporting material integrated into my assertion.”

Modality

  • Auxiliaries modality projects assertion, the writer’s stance

  • Lexical verbs modalities (seems, managed, demands etc) project observation, the world’s mechanics

  • Modal auxiliaries (must, can, should, will, might) are better whenever you need speed, raw rhetorical punch, lightness, or direct moral conviction.

  • Modal auxiliaries are your primary tool for ignition and energy.

  • Lexical modals build authority and evidence-anchored precision, overusing them can make prose feel dry, clinical, and bloated.

  • For punchy, simple sentences use an auxiliary

Fill in the coordination blanks

Spot where the reader has to fill in the coordination blanks. Find relations instead of never ending “and” which is tiering (“and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”). Relations however put cognitive load

Infinitive phrases

  • Intention, goals

  • Purpose

  • Potential

  • Ideas as object (the decision to…)

  • Also can reduce clauses

Finiteness

Most declarative sentences should have a clearly identifiable finite clause carrying the main assertion. Finite clause that advances the discourse, while non-finite clauses package supporting information.

  • Finite clause: Main assertion; highest discourse prominence

  • To-infinitival: Projected or intended event | Gerund-participial | Activity or process viewed as an entity or circumstance | | Past-participial | State or result used descriptively | | Bare infinitival | Event integrated into another verbal construction | | Verbless | Contextual frame with minimal independent prominence |

Bare infinitivals are not a general-purpose non-finite form. They occur mainly after a restricted set of licensers.

Compared with bare infinitivals, to-infinitivals are much more flexible and often give the action a more conceptual, potential, or future-oriented character.

Prepositions

  • Make relationships more specific between and among sentence parts,

  • Establish points of reference for readers, like road signs on a highway.

  • ???? See the writers option ????How, why, when, where, and indicate such adverbial concepts as manner, reason, likeness, and condition

  • Substitutes clause can be more concise

  • Clarify (substitute coordination)

  • Pairs imply balanced opposites or complete coverage of a subject (from..to)

  • Strengthen a series relationship (with x, with y, with z)

  • Heighten relationship between sentences

  • “The writers options” suggests to think about prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases together, same class of options

When you tell about your job at the Taco Bell near the mall outside of town, argue for or against prayer in public school, brag that your new computer can play chess like a master, or explain how scientists turn saltwater into fuel by a new chemical process—you’re using prepositions.

Accurate Meaning

  • Grammatical Meaning

  • Lexical Meaning

  • Grammatical signals

Interpretation

What do I want the reader to know before they evaluate this claim?

  • Its certainty? → modal auxiliary or stance adverb.

  • My degree of commitment? → stance verb.

  • Its evidential basis? → suggest, evidence, apparently.

  • Its logical status? → therefore, however, although.

  • Its evaluation? → It is likely…, It is surprising…, actually, clearly.

Stance

Choose the weakest stance that accurately reflects your evidence, and keep the focus on the claim rather than on yourself unless your personal judgement is the point.

  • Express possibility or uncertainty → use modal auxiliaries (may, might, could) or stance adverbs (probably, possibly).

  • Present an inference → use stance verbs (suggest, seem, appear) or stance adverbs (apparently).

  • Express confidence → use stance adverbs (clearly, certainly) or stance adjectives (It is clear that…).

  • Correct an expectation → use stance adverbs (actually, in fact).

  • Express personal judgement → use stance verbs (I think, I believe).

  • For modality, auxiliaries are better for stance then lexical verbs that carry modality semantics

By grammatical option:

  • May / might / probably — default for claims that go beyond the evidence.

  • Suggest / appear / seem — when drawing an inference from data, examples, or reports.

  • Clearly / certainly — only when the evidence is overwhelming or the point is genuinely uncontested.

  • Actually / in fact — when correcting a likely assumption or contrasting with what was just said.

  • I think / I believe — mainly in personal or opinion pieces; avoid repeating them in academic prose.

Concise

  • Omit words already mentioned earlier in the paragraph/sentence (unless repetition intended)

  • Omit needless words

  • Gerund, verbal nouns

  • Noun substitutions

  • Can repeat only relevant part of the subject

Some lawyers are arrogant, some simply reserved. (Only “some” is repeated)

Clause type by grammatical form

  • Declarative

  • Imperative

  • Interrogative

  • Exclamative

Options

  • Info package, construction

  • Inverted

  • Complex (one or more subordinates)

  • Subordinate - for what?

  • Parenthetical attribution

  • Canonical or non-canonical?

  • Affirmative (positive declarative)?

  • Conditional

Irrealis realization

  • Preterite → remoteness

  • Modal auxiliary → modal nuance

  • Lexical semantics → mood-like nuance

  • Perfect → past orientation (often yielding past counterfactuals)

  • Aspect → temporal structure

  • Be / been → state, location, passive, or progressive situation type

English driven reasoning patterns

  • Inference

  • Evidence Attribution

  • Qualification

  • Distinction

  • Definition

  • Reframing

  • Analytical Decomposition

  • Counterargument & Concession

  • Evaluation

  • Generalization

ESL (Zinisser)

  • Short is better than long.

  • Simple is good. (Louder)

  • Long Latin nouns are the enemy.

  • Anglo-Saxon active verbs are your best friend.

  • One thought per sentence.