Complete Sentences Here, you’ll learn how to write in complete sentences, and identify the eight parts of speech. Key Takeaway: You’ll need to know how to write complete sentences for school and for written communication in the workplace to clearly state your writing's purpose. Writing in a Complete Sentence Learning to write in complete sentences is important to clearly state the purpose of your writing. You’ll need to know how to write complete sentences for school papers and for written communication in the workplace such as reports, memos, emails, or text messages. Complete sentences have three main components. The subject of a sentence, which is the word that tells who or what is doing the action The verb, which tells what the action is and is part of the sentence’s predicate The object, which tells who or what’s acted upon Here are some simple sentences broken down into subjects, verbs, and objects. Subject Verb Object Lois left work. Jason ate breakfast. Elena texted everyone. In each of these sentences, there’s one subject and one object. Sometimes, a sentence can have no object, and other times, it may have more than one subject and more than one object. Multiple subjects are called compound subjects. Multiple objects are called compound objects. Read the following examples. The compound subjects and objects are underlined. Terry and Robin ate in the break room. (Compound subject) Karen and Lucas like to work all night. (Compound subject) Caleb met Jules and Jorge at the conference. (Compound object) John Adams wrote letters and books. (Compound object) Compound subjects are important because they can change the way the verb is used. Read the following example: Andre and Heather like to sing all night. In this sentence, Andre and Heather together are the compound subject. The subject is plural, so the verb “like” is plural. If only Heather were the subject of the sentence, the verb would be singular, and the sentence would require the singular verb form likes. You’ll explore this topic later, but it’s good to pay attention to compound subjects for this reason. So far, all of the sentences you’ve read have had a subject (or subjects) and an object (or objects). However, a sentence can be complete without an object. Consider these sentences: Joshua talked. Katherine wept. These are complete sentences because they contain both a subject and a verb. You don’t know why Joshua talked, what he talked about, or to whom he talked. You don’t know why Katherine wept. However, you do know that both Joshua and Katherine performed an action, which is all you need for a complete sentence. In a sentence, a noun can serve as the subject or the object. Consider the following sentence: Armando likes Lucia. In this sentence, the verb is likes—and who does the liking? Armando. Therefore, Armando is the subject of the sentence. What does Armando do? He likes Lucia. That’s his action in the sentence. Finally, who does Armando like? He likes Lucia. Lucia is the object of his verb, liking. In other words, Lucia is the object of the sentence. Armando and Lucia are both nouns, but they each have a different function in the sentence. Armando is the subject, and Lucia is the object. Nouns can either be subjects or objects in a sentence. Different types of words perform different jobs in a sentence. These types are known as parts of speech. To make sure your writing follows standard grammar rules, you should be able to use the following parts of speech correctly. Here are the eight parts of speech: Nouns Pronouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs Prepositions Conjunctions Interjections Quick Check Identify the object in this sentence: Tyra received the expense report from Angela. from received Angela report
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