What makes a simple sentence?
A simple sentence is the “simplest” sentence to create. It involves a subject and a predicate. Most of the time, the subject comes in the beginning of the sentence and the predicate follows the subject. If you are missing one or the other, you have an incomplete sentence.
How is a complete subject/predicate different from a simple subject/predicate?
When you practice writing complete, simple sentences, you need to learn about the complete subject/predicate and simple subject/predicate. Think of it like this: a complete subject/predicate is all of the words required to form the subject/predicate. However, the simple subject/predicate is the most important word in the complete subject/predicate.
Let’s take a look at this sentence.
The student in the third grade learned how to write a sentence.
The complete subject includes all the words that make up the subject of the sentence. “The student in the third grade” is the complete subject. When you’re figuring out the simple subject, you have to be able to shave off the details from the exact noun that is essentially “doing” the verb. In the example sentence, “student”, would be the simple subject, not “third grade” and definitely not “in” or “the”.
The complete predicate uses the same logic. The complete predicate in the example sentence would be, “learned how to write a sentence.” However, the simple predicate would just be the action verb, “learned”.
When you combine the simple subject and the simple predicate, you get, “student learned”. You should have a somewhat clear idea about the meaning of the sentence by identifying the simple subject and the simple predicate. All of the layers and the details added into the sentence would create the complete “subject” and “predicate”.
Are all simple subjects and predicates one word?
Not necessarily. Sometimes you’ll have proper nouns as the simple subject.
Let’s take a deeper look.
The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776.
The complete subject: The Declaration of Independence
The simple subject: Declaration of Independence
The complete predicate: was written in 1776
The simple predicate: was written
You can see that the simple subject is more than one word. When the simple subject is a proper noun (a specific name of a noun) made up of more than one word, it is still counted as the simple subject.
Also, the simple predicate is two words. Both “was” and “written” are required to show the action in the sentence, so both of these words in the verb phrase are counted as the simple predicate.
How do I know if I have an incomplete sentence?
You have to meet three criterion when writing a complete, simple sentence.
- Do you have a subject? Think of the subject as the doer of the action.
- Do you have a predicate? What is happening in the sentence? What is being described in the sentence?
- Do you have a complete thought? Your sentence should be able to stand on its own, or be “independent”.