Writing Workshop

Structure Analysis

When you write, you must be able to break down your sentence into its structural parts. Everything must fit; everything must be a recognizable part of the sentence. You should be able to easily locate the clauses, phrases, and word types.

I have prepared three sentences of varying complexity, and broken them down by clauses, subject/predicate, and phrases.

Plain Sentence Analysis

Here is an example sentence. It is a "Complex" sentence, but fairly plain.

He bought a new phone because his old phone was broken.

Let's break the sentence down into parts in different ways.

Sentence Form; Clauses

Subject, Predicate

Phrases

Medium Sentence Analysis

Here is an example sentence. It is a "Complex" sentence, but fairly plain.

My brother Samuel wanted to eat dessert even though dieting was important to him.

Sentence Form; Clauses

Subject, Predicate

Phrases

Difficult Sentence Analysis

Here is a more complicated example sentence. It is not a great sentence in terms of clarity and style because it is too long (32 words), but it is an interesting example because it includes all types of clauses and phrases in one sentence.

His eyes closed, leaning back in his chair, the student who worked hard found that studying late on Sunday, a weekend day, was a bad idea because he always wanted to sleep.

Let's break the sentence down into parts in different ways.

Sentence Form; Clauses

The sentence is complex, because it has one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses:

Phrases

This time, let's skip subjects and predicates, and just break this down into phrases:

As you can see, every word in the sentence can be found to have a structural part.

This can be confusing because there are various "layers" of parts (clauses, subject/predicate/complement, phrases, words), so there is a lot of overlap when you are trying to define parts.