The Mark County Board of Health now considers the town beach unsafe for swimming. Stay away from the beach. The board issued this warning again this morning.
The board closed the beach last Monday because of the flooding. Flooding yesterday was lower than Monday's levvels. It was still not low enough for safe swimming, though, according to the board.
Sentence Fragments
We can find the subject and verb in a sentence now, right? Well... what happens if the subject or the verb is missing from a sentence? Will the sentence make any sense? Take a look at the examples below, and decide if it is the subject, or the verb, that is missing.
At noon Wednesday.
The man wearing a green jogging suit.
Both of the sentences tell us part of a thought. But a complete sentence tells us a complete thought, right? In the first sentence, we know that something happened at noon on Wednesday. We don't know who or what did it. In our second sentence, we know that the man wearing a green jogging suit did something, but what did he do?
As written below, the sentences answer our questions and tell us a complete thought.
At noon Wednesday, an accident happened.
The man wearing a green jogging suit fell into an open manhole.
What Makes a Sentence Clear?
When a reader gets confused, they get frustrated. No one wants to have to try too hard to understand what they are reading. In the last part of this chapter, we're going to learn about two rules that lead to clear writing:
1. Make sure your words are in the right place.
2. Use the same form for all words in a list.
It can seem confusing at first, but don't worry. We're going to get into each rule and learn how it works before we continue.
Make Sure Your Words Are in the Right Place
Sometimes, the words in a sentence refer to other words. These words should be close together. If they're not close together, the sentence loses its meaning. You, the writer, know what you want to say. To make sure that your meaning is clear to the reader as well, you have to read your work very carefully.
The following sentence is not as clear as it could be.
