Most sentences are made of a subject, a verb, and an object.
To put it very simply, the part of a sentence before the verb is called the subject; the part after the verb is called the object. Here's a basic sentence:
| Subject | | Verb | | Object |
|---|---|---|
| Smith | | studied | | dogs |
Subjects, verbs, and objects can have more than one word, for example:
| Subject | Verb | Object |
|---|---|---|
| Smith and Jones | have not studied | cats, horses and fish. |
Now practise identifying the subject, verb, and object in academic-style sentences.
You can join two sentences to make one long sentence. In the example below, the word "but" joins two sentences to make one combined sentence:
| Sentence | ||||||
| Sentence 1 | Sentence 2 | |||||
| Subject | Verb | Object | Link | Subject | Verb | Object |
| Smith and Jones | have not studied | cats, horses and fish, | but | Brown and colleagues at Milan | have conducted | research at many zoos. |
Of course, there are many different choices of linking words, not just "but". See some more linking words in the following activity.
What is the linking word in these combined sentences?
There are lots of ways of linking sentences together, and there are some common patterns. Subject-Verb-Object is the most essential pattern to learn. (Find out more about sentence patterns in Section 8.)
Linking words are not always in the middle of the two short sentences, as you can see here:
If the research is successful, the results will be very interesting.
This is a combination of two short sentences:
The word if must stay with the condition sentence, and you need a comma (or a comma plus a word - such as "then"). to show where the two parts join. You can see the structure of the combined sentence here:
| Combined Sentence | |||||||
| Sentence | Sentence | ||||||
| if | Subject | Verb | Object | Link | Subject | Verb | Object |
| if | the research | is | successful |
, , then |
the results | will be | very interesting. |
Combining sentences is very useful for communicating your ideas because one short sentence, by itself, can give a fact or some information, but short sentences are not good at making your point. The reader might not guess your point by reading two short sentences - and it is important that you make points!
Finally, sentences can also be nested - like Russian dolls. For example, here are two sentences:
You can see that both sentences have the same subject, Brown. You can make these two sentences into one sentence. This is good because you can avoid repeating words, such as "Brown" in this example.
Brown, who is a colleague of Smith, studied at Oxford.
| Brown, | who is a colleague of Smith, | studied | at Oxford. |
| Subject | Nested sentence | Verb | Object |
| Subject | Verb | Object | |
You can see from the table above that the nested sentence has become part of the subject in the combined sentence.
