Writing Exercise: Various Sentence Patterns
 I, should you unfaithful, will immediately break this relationship between
us.
 To Japanese men, wives are like artworks which they can
appreciate/enjoy at home.
 He shouted at the monster, a creature with burning eyes and flaming
wings, while he took up his sword and shield.
 “Zombies! Coming!” Yelled the woman.
 Love is like a red red rose.
 Who knows?
 I am here, My Lord.
 Vincent is our dictionary.
 She is/looks/poses herself as gorgeous as Venus.
 The river cries./The wind shrieks.
 Tears dropped.
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes twinkling.
 He exploded with rage.
 The ceremony, weather permitting, will be held outside.
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes bleeding.
 Oh, you are my flower.
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes glistering with
tears.
 Mother is my fountain of inspiration, sword of courage and pillow of
comfort.
 Heart devastated.
 What on earth is that!
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes glaring.
 Silence/Time lasted/screams/speaks/kills/sings.
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes peeping out at
those wonders, God’s given.
 Literally speaking, to civilize Junior High students is a job coming
straight from Hell.
24 Figurative language
Simile
 It is not easy as striking a match on a mirror.
metaphor
 He is her 7-11.
 They stepped forth into the sea of matrimony and found it a very rocky
road.
allusion
 Tender is the night. (alludes to Keats’s nightingale ode)
 Flee now; pray later. (alludes to the familiar advertising slogan “Fly now;
pay later.”)
 Linguistics is my Achilles’’ heel.
personification
 The storm screams defiance.
 This is a society in terminal illness.
irony
 I couldn’t wait for joining the army!
Hyperbole/understatement
 A hundred years should go to praise/ Thine eyes, and on thy forehead
gaze;/ Two hundred to adore each breast,/ But thirty thousands to the
rest/ --Marvell’s “To This Coy Mistress”
 Seeing the house collapsed, he did nothing but humming a childhood
song.
(your own sentence)
23 The deliberate fragment
 (in a description) And those daffodils dancing in the spring breeze!
 (for transition) First, the chocolate and the roses.
 (for indicating conclusions) All too late.
 (for structuring a question or an answer) Based on love? No kidding.
 (for making exclamations or emphasis) What a price to pay!
 (for making explanation) All because of love.
 (in aphorisms or fragments of cliches) The more the merrier for us.
(your own sentence)
22 A short question for dramatic effect
 Who cares?
 What if the president calls?
 You made an A in Professor Killer’s class?
 What comes next?
 Who will bell the cat? –William Langland, Piers the Plowman
(your own sentence)
21 The short, simple sentence for relief or dramatic effect.
 Days passed.
 Perseverance pays.
 All efforts wasted.
 It so happened.
 Jesus wept. –The Bible
 Know thyself. –Plutarch, Lives.
 Call me Ishmael. –Melville, Moby Dick.
(your own sentence)
20 Absolute construction (noun plus participle) anywhere in the sentence
 The worldwide economy, God willing, will soon return to normal.
 I plan to settle in Hualing (my pension permitting) as soon as I retire.
 All things considered, the situation looks favorable.
 Casesar continues his march through Gaul, his army tattered, exhausted,
hardened—but victorious.
As absolute construction has no grammatical connection with the sentence,
it mush always have some punctuation, such as a pair of commas, dashes, or
parentheses.
 The little boy stood beside the swimming pool, his eyes ____________.
 The accordion player’s hands raced over the keys, his right hand
____________, his left hand __________.
(your own sentence)
19 Dependent Clause
S (dependent clause as subject) V .
S V (dependent clause as object.
 Why he deserted his family is a mystery to me.

 Genius, not stupidity, has limits.
18 A paired construction for contrast only
…this …not that;
not this but that
 The symphony conductor was convinced that it was she, not the
orchestra, and certainly not the music, that the audience had come to
honor.
 Genius, not stupidity, has limits.
 Count the nights by stars, not shadows.
 The reason that KMT won the presidential campaign lies not in the
charm of their candidate but in ____________.
 The purpose of taking a writing class is not to train students to write
perfect sentences but ____________.
(your own sentence)
17 Paired Constructions
Not only … but also
Just as …, so too …
If not … at least
The more …the more
The Former…, the latter….
Whether …or
So …that
Such …that
Not only … more than that
Both …and
As …as
Neither …nor
Not so …as
 If not praise, at least not blame.
 American tourists must realize that violations of laws in China are serious
not only because they flaunt traditional codes of behavior but also
because they reflect contempt for Oriental culture.
 The more I saw films by that director, the less I liked to recommend him.
 To accomplish great things, we must not ony act, but also dream; not only
plan, but also believe. –Anatole France
 The more earnest he tries to please his girl friend,
____________.
 Even though I broke up with my boyfriend, I feel that I owe him nothing,
neither in ____________ nor in ____________.
 (your own sentence)
16 Complete inversion of normal pattern
Object or complement or modifier V S.
 From the guru’s prophecy radiated a faith that ultimately all would be
well.
 Down the street and into the village the presidential candidate shook
hands with every potential supporter.
 From his years of suffering came eventual ____________.
 (your own sentence)
15 Object or complement before S V
 His kind of sarcasm I do not like.
 Content he can remain with his money; true friends he will never have.
 Honest and sincere a president should always be.
 __________ a child seldom understands.
 (your own sentence)
14 Prepositional phrase S
V (or V S).
 Down under the roller coaster, the world has a peculiar horror.
 After that, he stopped day-dreaming.
 “From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey.” –Homer, Illiad.
 __________ stood the housewife holding a loaded shot gun.
 (your own sentence)
13 A single modifier out of place for emphasis
Modifier ______, S
V.
 As a whole, people tend to be forgetful. (Notify the comma)
 Below, the traffic looked like a necklace of ants.
 The general demanded absolute obedience, instant and unquestioning.
 The autumn leaves, burgundy red and fiery orange, showered down like a
cascade of butterflies.
 I always have this dream in my mind that, if possible, __________.
 (your own sentence)
12 Introductory or concluding participles
 Overwhelmed by the tear gas, the rioters groped their way toward the
fountain to wash their eyes.
 Wet-eyed, dumbstruck by his performance, I pulled a five-dollar bill out
of my wallet and dropped that into the paper bag.
(rewrite the following sentence, beginning with the participle)
 If you water your African violets carefully they will burst into bloom.
 The residents of the apartment obeyed the water restriction rule and they
watered the lawn on Thursdays.
 (your own sentence)
11
A variation: same word repeated in parallel structure
S
V repeated key word in same position of the sentence.
 “Lust and Caution” captures a moment of time, a moment of passion, a
moment of perverse indulgence.
 “Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception, fraud,
conspiracy are the matter.” –Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
 “You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your despair.” –-Stanley Ullman, 15th C French
essayist.
 Your grandmother was right; there is nothing new under the sun, nothing
__________, nothing ____________, (only) ____________.
 (your own sentence)
10 Repetition of a key term
S
V key term, repeated key term. .
 We all inhabit a mysterious world—the inner world, the world of the
mind.
 In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson mocks community worship of outworn
customs, customs that no longer have meaning, customs that deny man
his inherent dignity and link him with the uncivilized world of beasts.
 Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing great
or small, large or petty--never give in except to convictions of honor and
good sense. –by Winston Churchill, Address at Harrow School, October
1941
 The destruction made by the earthquake is devastating, devastating to
__________, devastating also to ____________.
 (your own sentence)
9
Dependent clauses in a pair or in a series.
If . . . , if . . . , if . . . , then S
V.
When . . . , when . . . , when . . . , S
S
V.
V that . . . , that . . . , that . . .
 When he smelled the pungent odor of pine, when he heard the chatter of
jays interrupting the silence, when he saw the startled doe, the hunter
knew he had reached the center of the forest.
 Whether one needs fantasy or whether one needs stark realism, the
theater can become a mirror of life.
 If you have ______________, if ______________, if ______________, you
don’t have to be nervous before the exam.
 When I __________, when I
am reaching home.
____________, when I ________, I know I
 (your own sentence)
8
An internal series of appositives or modifiers.
S—appositive/modifier, appositive/modifier, appositive/modifier—V.
 The necessary qualities for political life—guile, ruthlessness and
garrulity—he learned by carefully copying his father’s style.
 Many of the books kids enjoy reading (Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red
Riding Hood) portray women in traditional and often single-dimentional
roles.
 The basic necessities in life-- ______________, ______________,
______________--make you qualified as a modern man.
 _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ .
7
An introductory series of appositives.
Appositive, appositive, appositive—summary word S V.
 Vanity, greed, corruption-which serves as the novel’s source of conflict?
 An old photograph, a haunting fragrance, a sudden view of a
half-forgotten scene—something unexpectedly triggers our nostalgia for
the past.
 The petty, the wronged, the fallen, the dignified, the cowardly, the
righteous, the lustful—each played an important role on the stage of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
 To ______________, to ______________, to ______________--such are the
goals of the average Taiwanese university students.
 _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ .
6
A series of balanced pairs.
A and B, C and D, E and F.
 The story of Spain is a history of kings and poets, saints and
conquistadores, emperors and revolutionaries, Cervantes and Picasso.
 It’s amazing how lifeless elements like stone and wood, nails and plaster,
glass and metal take on a soul after you turn them into a house.
 Eager yet fearful, confident but somewhat suspicious, Jason eyed the
barber who would give him his first haircut.
 ______________ and ______________, ______________ and
______________, ______________ and ______________, he stands on the
podium and accepts the award from the President.
 _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ .
5
A series with a variation.
A or B or C.
A and B and C.
 Peering down from the hill, Merlin could see the castle swathed in gloom
and fear and death.
 Despite his handicaps, I have never seen Larry angry or cross or
depressed.
 During World War II from fall into the summer of 1940, Germany rolled
into Poland, and Denmark and Norway and Holland and Belgium and
finally France.
 Looking toward Mount Jade, I could see that the fading afternoon sun
had tinted it ______________ and ______________ and _______________.
 What will be the main issues in the next presidential campaign,
______________ or ______________ or _______________?
 _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ .
4
A series with a conjunction.
A, B, C.
 Since unification in Berlin, walls have come down, barriers have been
broken, bonds have been formed.
 Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the love of
wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and the starlike things, the
undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite of
“what-next” in the joy of the game of living.
 Our priorities run to safety over style, value over flash, comfort over
speed.
 Oil booms are short-lived, speculative, ruinous to those who rely on them.
 ______________, ______________, _______________ are my favorite
summertime activities.
 ______________, ______________, _______________, the boy staggered
away from the girl with only a letter in his hand.
 _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ .
3
General statement (idea): specific statement (example).
 Darwin’s Origin of Species forcibly states a harsh truth: only the fittest
survive.
 Remember what the old saying prudently advises: be careful what you
wish for because you may actually get it.
 Weekdays are very similar to identical suitcases: they are all the same
size, but some people can pack more into them than others.
 ______________ are very similar to ______________:
________________________________.
 _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
.
2
S V DO or SC; S, DO or SC.
 We like classical music; George, punk rock.
 An artist’s instinct is intuitive, not rational; aesthetic, not pragmatic.
 For some students the party was a chance of making new friends;
______________.
 An owl symbolizes wisdom; ________________________________.
 _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
.
1.
S V; S V; S V.
 To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for
ornamentation is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is
the humor of a scholar.
 Touch not; taste not; handle not.
 He was daring; he was radical; but mostly ________________________.
 Some people blamed the mayor; ____________________; ___________.
 _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_.