Two Key Points about Sentence Skills
Read about two key points to keep in mind before you learn more about sentence-level skills.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how sentences work and how we can write them well, I'd like to address two key points. The first is regarding how sentence skills should fit into the writing process. I'd like you to notice that of our four keys to good writing: staying on topic, support, flow, and sentence skills, sentence skills is last. I'd like for you to think of this as reflective of the writing process. Sentence skills are NOT something to consider in your prewriting or even in your first draft. In fact, a focus on sentence skills too early in the process will stifle your creativity and flow of ideas. The last thing you want to do when writing a first draft is to sit there trying to correct every sentence level error.
Instead, think of sentence skills as the polish you will apply to your finished pieces of writing. Once you have a good topic sentence that raises a question answered by the rest of the paragraph, good supporting main ideas and details that are vivid and jump off the page, ideas in a logical order, and transitions that provide connections and show relationships between your ideas, only then is it time to go back through make sure that your sentences are error-free and use effective language. This is a final step and not something to worry about when you are writing a first draft.
The second key point I'd like to address is how folks tend to feel about the topics of sentence skills (which many people tend to think of as "grammar" and "spelling"). For many people, the first thing they think of when they think of an English class is sentence skills. Far too commonly, this association is a negative one.
And I get it. I can't deny that there are a LOT of rules to writing error-free and effective sentences, and I totally understand how all those rules can feel a little intimidating (or a lot!). However, we are going to break all of them down and what I think you will find is that the more you practice using these rules in your writing and the more you see these rules used correctly in what you read, the easier they are going to get and the more you will remember them.
Source: Erin Severs
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