Handmade responses to Sin And Syntax, chapter 9

1. Sample Handmade Responses
to Hale’s Sin and Syntax,
Chapter 9, Subjects and Predicates
with corresponding citations from the chapter
Angelo State University
English 4361: English Grammar
Dr. Laurence Musgrove
Department of English and Modern Languages
February 11, 2013
www.theillustratedprofessor.com
@lemusgro

2. “Sentence fragments may start with a capital letter and end with a period, but
these globs of words lack either a subject or, more often, a verb. They are
shards of thought, shadows of ideas, shams in the prose department” (145).

3. “Diagramming sentences also exposes a brutal truth about pileups of modifiers and
phrases: they do not advance the message; they dangle off the hull of a sentence like
towlines. The more a sentence drags extraneous words and phrases, the more it slows
from schooner to barge” (139).

4. “If subjects and predicates drift too far apart in sentences, separated by
endless intervening clauses, the reader may give up” (146).

5. “…*Modifiers and phrases+ do not advance the message; they dangle off the
hull of a sentence like towlines. The more a sentence drags extraneous words
and phrases, the more it slows from schooner to barge” (139).

6. “A sentence brings words together into a stream of thought. It lets fragments
flow together and become complete ideas. It has direction, a current,
momentum” (128).

7. “If the subject and predicate drift too far apart in sentences, separated by
endless intervening clauses, the reader may give up” (146).

8. “Tame savage sentences, combing through them until every hair is in place.
Then muss them up and see how you like the look” (131).

9. “Without a verb, a group of words can never hop to be anything more than a
fragment” (137).

10. “If subjects and predicates drift too far apart in a sentence, separated by
endless intervening clauses, the reader may give up” (146).

11. “Consider the sentence a story, a mini-narrative, a yarn, with a beginning and an
ending and a dramatic arc” (129).

12. “Julius Caesar showed unity of thought and expressed himself in the most direct
way possible. Like Caesar, you should put your faith in the sentence’s bare
bones: subject and predicate” (137).

13. “The predicate, in short, is everything that is not the subject” (137).

14. “The verb is the heart throb of a sentence” (137).

15. “Subjects and predicates—especially if they’re not strong—can get lost in a
mass of fluffy words” (144).