How to Start a Sentence: 10 Tips for Starting Sentences

Sentence openers are useful words that come at the beginning of your sentence and set the tone and clarity for the rest of your sentence. When you are writing in the English language, learning to begin a sentence in the right way can improve the structure, flow, and clarity of your writing. Varying your sentence openers prevents your writing from sounding repetitive, which makes a text more pleasing to your audience.

There are many different ways to open a sentence that you can use depending on what you’re trying to express. Whether you’re learning the fundamentals of sentence structure for English class or working on your dissertation, there are several popular phrases and words that you’ll commonly find at the beginning of a sentence.

1. 1. Comparison statements: Comparison statements sentence openers that compare or contrast information contained within the sentence with information that is stated in the previous sentence. Some words and phrases in this category include “Yet,” “In comparison,” “On the contrary,” “Despite this,” or “Rather than.”
2. 2. Statements that add information: These words and phrases introduce information in addition to a previous sentence, including words like “Moreover,” “Likewise,” “For example,” and “Along with.”
   
3. 3. Cause and effect statements: Cause and effect statements are words indicating that the information in a sentence is a result of something stated in the previous sentence. Some examples of these words and phrases include “As a result,” “Subsequently,” or “Obviously.”
4. 4. Time statements: Time statements are sentence openers that indicate that time has passed (or will pass) after a previous sentence. This category includes phrases like “In the meantime,” “After a while,” and “Before long.”
5. 5. Location statements: If you’re looking to indicate a location, you can start your sentence with words that specify a place such as “Next to the dumpster,” or “At the bottom of the lake.”
6. 6. Similes: Similes can be powerful sentence openers conveying rich imagery. For instance, you can construct a sentence to say: “Smooth as silk, she skated her way toward the gold medal.”

Before you can craft a well-written complete sentence, you’ll need to know how to properly start one. Here are some tips on how to use sentence starters to craft impactful sentences.

1. 1. Consider your central theme. Before you get started constructing a sentence, consider what your essential point is. Do you want to emphasize the subject, an action that the subject is performing, something that is being done to the subject, or how the subject feels? All of these questions can help you determine how you want to construct your sentence. In general. Think about what you want your reader to know about first, and use that to inform the beginning of the sentence.
2. 2. Examine the previous sentence. Even an expertly crafted sentence won’t make sense if it’s completely out of context. Always keep the previous sentence in mind when you’re crafting a new sentence. Make sure that the sentence you’re writing conveys information in a way that transitions easily from one sentence to another.
3. 3. Use transition words. Depending on the prior sentence, you may need to start with transitional words to shift to a new idea in the new sentence. Transitional words include terms like “Therefore,” “Additionally,” and “Furthermore.”
4. 4. Use a preposition. Prepositional phrases are frequently necessary to indicate the relationship between nouns, pronouns, and action verbs. You can easily use these phrases to open sentences. For example, you could say: “Behind the scenes, she worked tirelessly to achieve success.”
5. 5. Try a subject opener. If you want to construct a simple sentence, try using a subject opener to start it off. Subject openers are sentences that open with the subject. For example, you could say: “The bird flew through the air and set its sights on the trees.”
6. 6. Try a clausal opener. Opening a sentence with a clausal opener can construct a clear yet complex sentence. A clausal opener refers to sentences that begin with a clausal word, remembered by the acronym “WWW.ASIA” (where, when, while, as, since, if, although). Typically these sentences begin with the dependent clause opened with a coordinating conjunction, for example: “Although I appreciate your concern, I don’t think I should see a doctor.”
7. 7. Use an “ing” word. Words that end in “ing,” also known as gerunds, can also be used for sentence openers. Typically, these types of sentence openers highlight an action that the subject is performing. For example, you could say: “Running for his life, he hid behind a tree.”
8. 8. Use an “ed” word. You can also start a sentence with words that end in “ed” for another kind of sentence to emphasize a feeling or state of being that the subject is experiencing. For example, you could say: “Perplexed by the childrens’ words, the teacher looked back through the textbook.”
9. 9. Use an adverbial phrase. Adverbs (or words ending in “ly”) open a sentence in a way that emphasizes the way or state of mind in which an action is performed. For example, you could say: “Quietly, the thief snuck through the warehouse and started loading up his bag.” This transitional structure can also connect your current sentence to the one that preceded it.
10. 10. Keep it simple. If you want to achieve a minimalistic style of writing, think about summarizing your points into a short sentence (or VSS). A very short sentence contains five or fewer words, though sometimes the opener can be the only word in the sentence. Examples of a VSS opener include: “The child cried.” “She was annoyed but patient.” “Sprinting clumsily, he tripped."

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