Certain types of sentences, or their arrangement, can affect the text significantly by adding interest or emphasis. Writers sometimes deliberately choose a variety of syntactical constructions for their sentences; at other times, they consciously repeat certain types of sentences to achieve the desired effect. Varying sentence structures can be achieved by using different sentence styles.
• Parallel Structure: Words, phrases, or clauses that have the same grammatical form and are similar in length are parallel in structure.
Example: “That’s why, to my mind, Utah should feel free to ax senior year, bank the savings and see what happens.”
Example: “... the senior year of public high school is less a climactic academic experience than an occasion for oafish goofing off, chronic truancy, random bullying, sloppy dancing...”
• Telegraphic sentences or rhetorical fragments: Rhetorical fragments and telegraphic sentences are short phrases or simple sentences used to emphasize and slow down the reader.
Example: “My hunch is that nothing will happen. Nothing much. Just the loss of a year when nothing much happens anyhow.”
▶ Note how the short sentence is followed by rhetorical fragments that emphasize the main idea by repeating the word “nothing.”
• Balanced sentences contain phrases or clauses that balance each other with a similar structure, meaning, or length.
Example: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”—John F. Kennedy"
Coherence: A coherent essay presents ideas that tie together and flow smoothly, making the piece easy for the reader to follow. Revise for coherence by using transitional words and phrases within and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases include the following: because, since, for the same reason, obviously, evidently, furthermore, besides, indeed, in fact, in any case.
(Adapted from SpringBoard Writing Workshop English II)