Overview

Sentence combining can make your writing more readable. You will sometimes find that by combining short sentences into longer, more complex ones, you can express your ideas more clearly and precisely. Four sentence-combining strategies are (1) deleting repeated words, (2) using connecting words, (3) rearranging words, and (4) changing the form of words.

To test how sentences sound, you may whisper sentences to yourself, try out sentences on a partner, consider context when forming sentences, compare your sentences with those of other students, look for stylistic patterns in your writing, and take risks and learn from your mistakes.

When working alone, you may try varying the length and structure of your sentences; also, try experimenting with parallelism, interruption, and unusual patterns for emphasis.