Category: Blog 4

After doing the sentence analysis, I noticed that in my writing I use a lot of simple and compound sentences. I wasn’t as surprised because I tend to stick to using those structures more than  I do with complex and complex-compound. I also noticed that I tend to have a lot of choppy sentences within my writing. I’m not sure why that is. I usually cut my thoughts short to prevent run on sentences. I tend to use a lot of those as well. I feel like because this was a first draft, I was more concentrated on getting all my thoughts on paper. I wasn’t as focused on my sentence structures. I use first drafts as a way to get all my thoughts out, then the second draft is when I go through my sentences and start to notice the structures and organize them. In my final draft, I want to start using more complex, and complex-compound sentences. In my first draft, there’s a lot of compound and simple sentences. These changes can enhance my writing because with using more complex/complex-compound sentences I can go even more in depth with my words. Additionally, it can make my essay flow more smoothly. Instead of having all these short sentences, using the structures connect my sentences. Having just simple sentences in your essay makes it sound really choppy and it can disengage the reader. It could sound like a children’s storybook if you don’t include some other types of sentence structures.

When it comes to determining what writing style I have, examining what sentence types I use can be very helpful. After looking through the first two paragraphs of my draft, I found out I have a tendency towards compound and complex sentences. I identified 7 complex sentences and 4 compound sentences. It is possible there might be even more that I didn’t properly identify but the numbers do tell me this: I love complex sentences. On the other hand, I hardly used simple sentences at all. This fact surprised me because I was expecting simple sentences to appear just as often as compound sentences, but I guess when it comes to writing papers I try to avoid them. What definitely stands out the most is the sheer lack of any complex-compound sentences in my writing. There was not a single sentence in the paragraphs I looked at that could be identified as complex-compound. I can guess why I don’t use simple sentences often: I want my writing to appear more sophisticated. But why I don’t use complex-compound sentences at all is beyond me. Well, I guess there is nothing in the first two paragraphs of my paper that really necessitates such a sentence type. I suppose I should at least try to include on complex-compound sentence in the paragraphs where I have to compare the two objects. Knowing which sentence types I tend to use the most and which I don’t use at all will help me a long way in becoming a better writer.

                  No I was not surprised by the results. I was pretty confident my paper had very few simple sentences. After reviewing my essay I only had 3/18 sentences constructed as simple sentences, 8/18 compound sentences, 3/18 complex sentences and 4/18 complex compound sentences. I feel as if the reader will always be engaged because every sentence has a meaning. The simple sentences in my draft are used to introduce a topic or to explain my more advanced sentences. The compound sentences provided a lot of insight while the complex compound provided a lot of reasoning. Although I feel as if I did a great job on this piece I think I could use this sentence structure as a reference for my writing at all times. A structure of very few simple sentences and more compound, complex and compound complex is my type of format because I can keep the audience more engaged and my writing feels more reputable. I will be sure to keep an eye out on my sentence structure throughout the rest of my essay to be sure it is well published. Complex and Compound Complex sentences are great ways to enhance your writing because they usually involve a lot of transitional phrases and a lot of cause and effect scenarios. I am happy I got the opportunity to learn sentence structure and I will be sure to teach others about sentence structure when proof reading their work. Additionally, improving your sentence structure can help improve your dialect as that is something I would like to see improve.

As I am reading through my first draft to fill out my sentence revision form, I realize that I use a lot of commas in my writing and that I have a lot of long run-on sentences or choppy sentences because I use too many commas. This wasn’t really surprising to me because long run-on sentences have always been an issue for me. I think this happened because this was my very first draft so I was just trying to get down all my ideas onto the paper instead of being worried about if it makes sense and I also definitely did not read over it to make sure that it made sense. I was also a little surprised because I am never too confident in my writing so I was expecting a lot of wonky, weird, and hard-to-read sentences but to my surprise, I was faced with a lot fewer mistakes than I was expecting. This would help me make more changes in my draft by taking out unnecessary words, commas and cutting down some of my run-on sentences, and incorporating more simple style structured sentences into my writing as it would help me get the main idea of the paper to the reader in a clearer and easier way. These changes would help enhance my writing by making my point come across better on better and help me get straight to the point rather than a lengthy and wordy piece of paper.

As I completed my sentence analysis with my draft, I realized I use simple and compound sentences a lot. Those were my main two styles, and it didn’t really surprise me. Whenever I write, I tend to either get straight to the point, thus the simple sentences, or I explain my thoughts in depth — the compound sentences. These reveal to me that I’m always writing everything the same way. I don’t mix it up, which can make my work harder to read. Seeing how often I use these two types of sentences, I know I’m going to change it as I continue with my final draft. I want to mix styles more, and not just have my whole essay be in one tone. I think this would also make my ideas flow better because I won’t have to organize all of my thoughts a certain way. For example, if I use different sentence styles and add either more independent or dependent clauses, I can create more of a variation of my ideas. This will allow me to explore my own style of writing to see what works best for me, instead of just sticking with my old habits. I also plan on making my paragraphs longer by elaborating more on my ideas. Adding in complex-compound sentences, for example, will help me achieve my goal of expanding my thoughts. Similarly, I have some sentences that I need to shorten, but still make them impactful, so adding more complex sentences would help me with that.

The way a paper is written, including the types of sentences used in it, has major effects on whether a reader will understand the paper. Repetitively writing one type of sentence in a paragraph will cause the readers to be disengaged and perhaps confused. A writer should always aim to balance the different types of sentences they use in their paper. In the two paragraphs I chose, I utilized all four types of sentences mentioned in the slides and the article. In the paragraphs, I wrote 6 complex sentences, 4 simple sentences, 3 compound sentences, and 2 complex compound sentences. The result reveals that I utilize complex sentences the most in my writing. I was a little surprised that I had 4 simples which I thought would be lower. Another thing I was surprised about was I had 6 complex sentences 3 compound sentences. I thought I would have the most number of compound sentences but it was probably due to that I wrote 4 simple sentences. The count of different sentence types will encourage me to limit the number of simple sentences within my writing. Perhaps I can combine some simple sentences and form compound sentences. These changes will enhance my writing because some simple sentences combined will make the piece of writing easier to read or flow better. In addition, I can also choose to explain more in those simple sentences to make them complexes, compounds, or even compound complexes. For the final paper, I think I will be focusing on explaining the quotes more and making the arguments more clearly for the readers to understand.

To be quite honest, I was not as surprised by the results. The only part that surprised me was there were 2 simple sentences, which I thought would be the least. I know that I’m pretty wordy, especially when it comes to essay writing like analysis, therefore, I did expect there to be fewer simple sentences. I think the overall results do support how I’ve seen my writing, as trying to add a lot of information into each sentence, whether that ends up being the most efficient way varies. It also might have been since it was a draft I was trying to get a lot of my ideas and information on paper, so it might have added to it. I would want to look over what is written and see if the way they are written is truly helpful or maybe rewriting them in a different sentence-style will help improve the overall message. Therefore, it will help me be more conscious of how exactly I’m writing as some sentences might benefit being, for instance, a compound sentence, while others might be better as a simple sentence.  These edits go with how I plan to revise my draft as I want to review it and try to make sense of how to organize the information for it to make the most sense. This goes with the sentence revision as maybe it would make more sense for me to change the order of the information or reword it so that the overall message makes the most sense. 

After marking each sentence in two of my paragraphs, the results showed that I’ve incorporated all 4 writing styles, but I used complex and compound sentence structures more so than any other. This is mostly because of my usage of transition words and prepositions to start my sentences. The least used style within my 2 paragraphs was the complex compound style. . The result wasn’t that surprising to me since, for first drafts, I’m aware that I use these structures more so than any other one. Due to this, I create sentences that are a bit wordier than I would like. This forms a tiresome-to-read sentence, which could lose its value in the grand scheme of things. It also leads to many instances of redundancy. To accommodate for these issues, I’ll work on changing and incorporating more simple style structures. This structure will allow the main point of the sentence to be emphasized and shown in a more clear manner. I can also work on cutting down unnecessary words within these complex and compound sentence structures to make them easier to read and flow better. Sentence structure correlates to the other edits and revisions I plan on making by it brings clarity to the main theme of each paragraph and corresponding sentences. Efficient sentence structure usage is important in creating fluid transitions from sentence to sentence. Ideally, this would make grammatical issues easier to spot, the writing process smoother, and the viewing process more enjoyable.