3 Dynamic Sentence Styles that will Supercharge your Writing

3 Dynamic Sentence Styles that will Supercharge your Writing –

When you need to make a great impression in your writing, basic sentence structures you learned in high school won’t do. The solution? Use the method the professionals use: Add interest by varying your sentence patterns. Employing energetic styles and sentence rhythms will be sure to keep your audience coming back for more.

Whether you’re writing for business, school, or any other purpose, these 3 dynamic sentence styles can start supercharging your sentences today.

1) Use a semicolon to join shorter sentences

Using short, simple sentences is fine, but it doesn’t really help your writing stand out from the crowd.  Try this method: When you have two short sentences that are thematically related, join them together with a semicolon. This is a simple, creative way of adding impact and forming memorable compound sentences.

For example:

See how the semicolon creates so much more impact? Be sure both sides of the sentence are independent clauses that make sense on their own. In addition, the clauses must be closely related by theme; if not, the combination will confuse your readers.

2) Use a colon to give further information about your topic

The second of our dynamic sentence styles features the humble colon. Though she be but little, she is fierce!

End your main clause with a colon, followed by a phrase or clause that describes, explains, or defines a noun in the main clause.

This colon method is a great way to bring energy into your sentence. When done properly, the first part of the sentence creates a feeling of curiosity that will be resolved by the second part. This anticipation is what makes this form effective. For example:

To use this style correctly, you must have a noun in the independent clause that is described, explained, or defined after the colon. In these sentences, the nouns being expanded upon are ‘rule,’ ‘something,’ and ‘words’.

3) A phrase placed in the middle of a sentence

This style is similar to style 2, except now the phrase that explains or renames a noun comes in the middle of the sentence, splitting it into two parts.

The phrase is dependent, containing neither subject nor verb, and is set apart either with “em dashes” (long dashes that look like this: — ) or parenthesis. The parts outside of the parenthesis or dashes must always be a complete sentence.

Take a look at these examples:

Chicago Style (as in the above examples) does not place spaces around em dashes. However, AP Style, which is used in many news publications, requires spaces unless the dash introduces items in a vertical list.

Here’s an example of AP Style:

That’s up 28% — about $125,000 more per year — since 2019. -Danny Westneat, Seattle Times

Use em dashes if the extra information is especially important to the topic, or parenthesis if the information is more of a “by the way” idea.

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Start mixing in these professional sentence forms and take your writing to the next level. Or you can connect with us today and let Editing Advantage do the work for you!

Thanks for checking out these Professional Sentence Styles that will Supercharge your Writing

For some great practice with these and other sentence styles, you will love The Art of Styling Sentences by Ann Longknife (Available on Amazon)

You should also check out Stunning Sentences by Nina Schuyler (Available on Amazon)

 Also, be sure to explore some of my other posts!

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