Talking about: Simple Sentence Structure, sentence fragments, subjects, complete subject, simple subjects, predicates, complete predicates, simple predicates, objects, and verb phrases.

In English, a sentence is structured with the noun before the verb. Otherwise known as the subject before the predicate.

The subject in a sentence is who or what is doing something. It's usually a noun (a person/place/thing/idea).

A predicate in a sentence is the verb or what the subject is doing or what is happening to the subject.

If you think of this as an equation, it would be:

Complete Sentence = Noun + Verb

Or:

Complete Sentence = Subject + Predicate

Examples of complete (simple) sentences:

1. She walked to the store.
2. He wanted some cocoa.
3. I've always wanted a cat.

The subjects will be in bold and the predicates will not.

1. She walked to the store.
2. He wanted some cocoa.
3. I've always wanted a cat.

All of these examples have both a predicate and a subject, and can therefore be considered a complete sentence.

There are two different types of subjects: simple and complete. The simple subject is one word that the sentence is about. Those sentences above with the subject bolded has the simple subjects (in this case) bolded as well.

Look at this sentence with only the simple subject bolded:
The devilish-looking cat sneered as he spoke.

The seconds type of subject is the complete subject. The complete subject contains the simple subject and all the words that modify or describe the simple subject. This would include the adjectives.

Let's look at the same sentence again except this time with the complete subject bolded:
The devilish-looking cat sneered as he spoke.

There are also two different types of predicates: simple and complete. It's the same things as complete subject and simple subjects except it's the complete predicate and simple predicate.

The simple predicate is one word that describes specifically and simply what the subject is doing also known as the verb.

The simple predicate is bolded:
The devilish-looking cat sneered as he spoke.

As you've probably guessed, the complete predicate contains the simple predicate and all other words that modify it and complete the thought.

The complete predicate is bolded:
The devilish-looking cat sneered as he spoke.

Within the predicate there's one more part: the verb phrase.

The verb phrase contains the main verb and all the other helping verbs such as may or might.

The verb phrase is in bold and the helping verb is in italics and bold:
He have to make the due date.

Lastly there's the object or what receives the action of the subject.

The object is bolded:
She ate a hotdog

When a sentence is missing either a subject or a predicate, it's said to be a sentence fragment.

A sentence fragment is an incomplete sentence that's missing either a predicate or a subject.

Examples:

1. walked to the store
2. The People of the House
3. taking a walk

You can tell that these are missing something.

No. 1 is missing a subject. Who or what is walking to the store?

No. 2 is missing a predicate. What did the People of the House do or what have they done?

No. 3 is again missing a subject. Who or what is taking a walk?

You want to avoid sentence fragments in your writing. They're bad. Most of the time, sentence fragments are pieces of sentences that have been cut off from the main clause or main sentence.

The fragment is in bold:
The baseball team sucked at that game. Really badly.

The easiest way to fix this is to just remove the period between the sentence and the fragment. Another fix is if you used an ellipsis ( . . . ) between the two.

I'm telling you this now so that later topics are easier to explain. Also, to make sure that people stop using fragments in their stories from now on. If you have any questions put them in the comments or PM me and I'll do my best to answer them. If you have a request for a topic then put it in the comments or PM me as well.

SURPRISE! I'm gonna tell you outright and say that this whole book is literally just a study guide for an exam that's probably gonna happen soon.

-Rose B