What is a sentence?
A sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought. It usually has a subject and a verb, starts with a capital letter and ends with a period, question mark or exclamation mark.
In the sentence The cat sleeps, the subject is the cat and the verb is sleeps. Sentences can be very short, like Go! or long and complex, with several clauses joined together. A group of words that lacks a subject or verb, or does not express a complete thought, is called a fragment.
There are four main types of sentences by purpose. Declarative sentences make statements, interrogative sentences ask questions, imperative sentences give commands and exclamatory sentences show strong feeling. By structure, sentences can be simple, compound, complex or compound-complex.
Long sentences
Some authors have written extremely long sentences. A sentence in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables contains more than 800 words, and some modern novels contain sentences running for many pages. Most style guides recommend an average of about 15 to 20 words for clear writing.
Did You Know?
The word sentence comes from the Latin sententia, meaning opinion or feeling.