Charles Dube
THE first part of this presentation comes as an afterthought from the last presentation. I am talking about using minor sentences in writing. Minor sentences are a type of sentence that does not contain a main verb. They may contain no verb at all, or they may contain a non-finite verb. A non-finite verb may be: a present participle ending in “-ing”, such as “sleeping” or ‘running”.
In addition to the definition of an infinitive verb stated last time, that it is the part listed in a dictionary, here is another view: an infinitive is the basic form of a verb which begins with “to” such as “to be” or “to watch”. Before getting deeper into sentence discussion I feel it is worthwhile to go back to basics and define a sentence. A sentence can be defined in a number of ways. 1. A sentence is a group of words which begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.
For instance: Butho is reading a newspaper. Is it true that Butho is reading a newspaper? Butho reading a newspaper! 2. A sentence is a group of words usually put together according to grammatical rules. Usually a sentence has a subject, a predicate. The subject of a sentence is the word or words that represent the person or thing that is doing the action expressed by the verb. For example, in the sentence: She likes swimming, – she is the subject. The predicate is the rest of the sentence.
It contains a verb which tells what the subject is doing, or what happens to the subject. The subject is – She, the predicate “likes swimming”. It is important to note that the subject does not always come at the beginning of sentences. To find the subject you must identify the main verb. Ask yourself what or who? What came or who came? For example: After the speech, came a noise of whistlers. The answer to the question will be the subject of the sentence.
Sentence construction and punctuation. Use capital letters at the start of sentences. Every sentence starts with a capital letter. Jack is carrying a stick. I think he wants to attack Ralph with it. Both of these sentences need capital letters at the beginning. “I” has a capital letter wherever you use it. Some words always start with a capital letter even in the middle of a sentence. For example: 1. People’s names and titles: Julius Caesar fought many battles; Aragon, Prince of Morocco.
Names of organisations like AU — African Union. Titles of books and plays: Lord of the Flies and Romeo and Juliet. Short words like, “of”, “the” and “upon” do not have capital letters. Towns and names of places: Plumtree, Maphisa. Countries, nationalities and languages — Zimbabwe. I am Zimbabwean. I come from Zimbabwe and I speak Nambya. Capital letters are also found in religions, names of gods and religious believers. Christianity is a religion. Muslims worship Allah.
Names of days and months are also capitalised — Wednesday, Friday, June, July and August. This also applies to public holidays and religious days — Easter, Heroes Day. Names for particular people, places and things are called proper nouns. Some nouns are capitalised sometimes, but not at other times. For example: Some kings rule their countries forever. The King dismissed the Prime Minister. If you are talking about a particular king, you need a capital letter.
Harare is a capital city with a capital “H”. Use punctuation to finish sentences correctly. Full stops end sentences — they are used to end statements. If you are writing an essay you will finish most of your sentences with a full stop. Examples: The Christians portray Shylock as evil. This reflects their prejudice against other religions. Question marks show the end of a question. They show that you are asking a question.
For instance, — Why were you making noise in the Dining Hall? Some sentences tell you about a question but do not actually ask one. For example: Piggy asks Ralph why Jack hates him. This is not actually asking a question, so there is no question mark. This is a statement about what Piggy does — it just needs a full stop.
Use of commas — Without commas, lists would be a jumbled-up mess and long sentences would not make much sense. Commas separate items in a list. Examples: She went to the market to buy cabbage, potatoes, carrots and beetroot. Without commas this sentence would be hard to understand. Add a comma after each item to make your list clear. You only need to use commas in lists of three or more items.
Use commas to separate two adjectives next to each other which could be separated by “and” like, “She was a cruel, heartless queen. You could put “and” between cruel and heartless, so you need a comma.
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