Syntax is a fundamental element in writing well. A good writer does not need to know all the syntactic parts and types of sentences like a philologist, but he or she must master the syntactic order to avoid mistakes and have a careful style.
A writer should not have profound knowledge because we understand that if he/she chooses to publish, the publishing house must have professional proofreaders who will have all the advanced knowledge, and there are also lots of paper writing websites like https://www.wowessays.com/ with professional writers that could help you with syntax issues.
What is syntax for? This is a question that many people ask and that many language teachers ask. Believe it or not, syntax helps us write better and even for thinking since it organizes our language and, at the same time, our thinking.
Syntax: a question of order
The same applies to the writer. Syntax must be approached from the ability to select the order in which information is presented, and sentences are joined. To write well, basic concepts such as the following must be internalized:
Subject: who acts
Predicate: what action is performed
We must remember that the action is expressed using a verb (we must know how to conjugate them) and that it is an essential condition of every sentence that subject and predicate agree in person and number. Likewise:
Simple sentence: formed by a single verb
Compound sentence: made up of several verbs. Each unit is called a proposition.
When a person begins to write, he/she should write in the natural order of sentences: Subject, verb and predicate. By doing so, he/she will avoid concordance errors. This is an excellent way to start writing well.
As the writer matures, he/she can create more complex syntactic structures, alter the order while maintaining correctness, generate compound sentences, and give syntactic variety to his/her texts.
The writer’s intention in writing
In the syntax, the poetic intention, the objective to be achieved with the text, and even the target audience will also come into play. Nowadays, books aimed at the general public, the bestsellers, have a simple and direct syntax so that the reader can be consumed fluently by the most significant number of people.
The use that writers have made of syntax throughout history has also been very different. There are different opinions on the use of syntax, although there is a tendency that believes that the art of writing well lies in the ease of using a simple syntax, even for the most complex ideas.
A simple idea = a simple sentence.
A complex idea = a simple sentence.
How to write well: Syntax to make the text agile
Syntax will contribute to the rhythm of the text. The rhythm will be fast when a fragment has simple sentences and many periods. The pace will be slower with compound subordinate sentences with hardly any periods.
Because of the rhythm, the syntax can be adapted to the type of scene we want to describe. If we are in front of a thrilling action scene, we must speed up the text, although if we slow down the pace, we may generate more expectations in front of a reader eager to know what happens.
It is not easy to master the narrative rhythm. Only experienced writers are able to achieve it. They will be those who have read a lot and worked hard on their texts, since it is necessary to reread and rewrite before giving the final touch.
The vocabulary also generates agility: the simpler it is, the more agile it is. Unnecessary flourishes should also be avoided, for example, by preventing adjectives that do not provide essential information.
Knowing all the syntax issues, we would like to give you ten tips on how to write well:
- If you are starting, use the basic order of the sentence: subject, verb, and predicate. But be careful not to fall into the “telegram” style.
- If you write poetry, experiment. Change the syntactic order; it will contribute to the sonority and rhythm and give you new rhyming possibilities.
- Vary the type of sentences you have been writing for some time, alternate simple sentences with compound sentences to avoid syntactic repetition.
- Avoid negative sentences as much as possible.
- Use more active sentences than passive sentences.
- Make paragraphs shorter and take care of punctuation. Excessive use of commas hinders reading. By the way, the subject cannot be separated from the predicate by a comma.
- Try to say things in as few words as possible.
- Do not introduce too many words between the subject and the verb, as it will be easier to fall into concordance errors, known as an acolyte.
- If a sentence “squeaks”, if you think something doesn’t quite fit or sounds strange, rewrite it more precisely.
- Don’t give up on having a style that gives your texts character.
How does a writer master syntax in his or her texts?
To write well at an academic level, the training we receive in high school would be enough, but after that, the training as a writer remains, which we could summarize in two: reading and writing.
As for reading, the ideal is to read books from different periods and authors to get to know the different syntactic structures. As for writing, we invite you to experiment, to try different types of syntactic order and types of sentences, read it later, and keep what is best, even what your zero readers understand best. You’ll see how much they appreciate simple language.
Oral and written syntax
And one more thing, in syntax, we can also differentiate between oral and written syntax. Logically, when you write a dialogue representing the conversation between several characters, you have to reflect that orality that will not have the part of the text that corresponds to the narration.
This difference can also be found in everyday cases, such as politicians. Compare an impromptu speech and an official speech that you have previously written. In the first case, if we were to analyze the syntax, we could find errors that, in orality, may go unnoticed but that, heard little by little, can be language aberrations.
