How to Use Sentence Starters for Essays

How to Use Sentence Starters for Essays The worst nightmare of every essay writer is creating a work where sentences are choppy, repetitive, and difficult to understand. I have written numerous articles and essays which seemed excellent during the process, but their final versions were all bad. This is why thoroughly reading every work you write and making necessary edits is essential. During proofreading and editing, you can implement some sentence variety strategy (in case you haven’t done so while you were writing) and make your work easy to understand. Sentence variety strategies are important for establishing your writing style and voice which represent your identity. Throughout this post I’m going to provide a useful insight into sentence variety strategies that you can use to improve your works. Courtesy:cherica.tumblr.com Evaluating sentence variety When you’re writing essay, article or any other type of work you usually do not pay too much attention to sentence style mostly because it disrupts creative flow. The best thing to do is to implement a strategy to review variety of sentences into editing process. This strategy should be focused on sentence beginnings, lengths, and types. Take a blank piece of paper and create three columns: Column #1 – opening words in all sentences Column #2 – number of words in each sentence Column #3 – types of sentences you used (exclamatory, interrogative, affirmative etc.). TIP: Instead of counting words yourself, select sentences one by one and use Miscrosoft Word’s Word Count option. These columns will help you identify the problem i.e. sentences too long, repetitive content, wrong types of sentences. Then, implement sentence variety strategies below to edit your work. Alternate short and long sentences to vary the rhythm Writing several sentences of the same length can make your work (or that particular paragraph) seem monotonous and difficult to follow. To bring back liveliness into your work alternate short and long sentences which improve rhythm. Example: Jane became a member of her friend’s book club to discuss great literary works. She assumed they would read War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and other great books. But, she was disappointed when she realized that nobody read the book and other women just gossiped. She went home without getting to discuss things she read and sad for having high expectations. Revision: Jane became a member of her friend’s book club to discuss great literary works such as War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and other great books. She realized that nobody discussed books there. Jane discovered that other women didn’t read book and they just gossiped which is why she had to go home without getting to discuss what she read. High expectations usually disappoint.