Six Easy Ways to Vary Your Sentences

Six Easy Ways to Vary Your Sentences

Good writers vary their sentences to make their writing more interesting. Readers appreciate writing that is vivid and varied. Here are some techniques found in my book, Simple Steps to Sentence Analysis.

Try these six easy ways to vary your sentences:

1.  Begin with a prepositional phrase.

After the winter storm, the trees began to bud again. 

2. Begin with one or twoadjectives. 

Cold and hungry, the dog howled at the moon. 

3.  Begin with an adverb. 

Quietly, she began her journey up the stairs. 

4.  Begin with a verbal phrase, but be careful that the word the phrase modifies is placed near it to avoid a misplaced modifier. 

Incorrect: Lying in the grass, the sky looked beautiful.

Oops! Was the sky lying in the grass? 

Correct: Lying in the grass, I thought the sky looked beautiful. 

5.  Vary the length of your sentences. 

Use short sentences for emphasis and to quicken the pace of your writing. 

Don't go.

Use longer sentences to slow the pace and make the writing more formal. 

Take your time and remain here with me for a while.

6.  Vary the patterns of your sentences. 

Use all four of the sentence types: 

• simple sentences
• compound sentences
• complex sentences
• compound/complex sentences

If you need more help with any of the techniques or sentence parts above, everything you need to know will be found in my grammar handbook: Simple Steps to Sentence Analysis. You will find here for only $6. For a limited time, everyone who purchases the book will get a link to a free set of practice exercises. The link is in the book. 

Thanks for reading,