Hi Craig,

I agree on the marginal utility of the "complete thought" definition.  I don't know about anyone else, but pretty much all of my written thoughts are complete thoughts. :)  Writing centers sometimes use these additional strategies:

* Turn it into a written question--can you do that without leaving words out?  (e.g., *Was he one of the first ones to do so because? shows that "Because he was one of the first ones to do so" is not a sentence)

* frame sentence ("they refused to believe the fact that _______" and if your group of words fits in the blank, it's a sentence)

* stare test (if you walk up to someone and say those words, will they stare at you waiting for you to finish?  e.g., "Because he was one of the first ones to do so."  huh?)

Unfortunately, I can't cite a source for these but I'll bet you could find them on the Purdue OWL or other wctr website.  At least some of them may come from Martha Kolln's text, even.

Beth

>>> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> 9/21/2009 1:02 PM >>>
I'm working on a project that starts with a critique of current 
(school based) descriptions and definitions of the sentence, but it 
occurs to me that I may be unaware of practices in other parts of the 
country.
   The most prevalent definition I run into from students starting 
college in New York state is "a sentence is a group of words that 
expresses a complete thought". This is echoed in "Writing Talk", 5th 
edition, 2009, Winkler and McCuen-Metherell, (just sent me by a 
publisher, so I'm using it as a representative text for college level) 
who follow that up with "This completeness is what your speaker's ear 
uses to recognize a sentence" (p. 49), which fairly nicely frames the 
approach--not a full description of the sentence, but an attempt to 
awaken the student writers' intuitive feel for minimally necessary forms.
   The other definition/description I get is that "a sentence is a group 
of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period, 
question mark, or exclamation point", which would seem to grant the 
writer discretion in deciding what constitutes a sentence (complete 
thought or not.)
    The point I'm trying to make (at least at the start) is that these 
approaches have limited utility and may be deeply misleading for anyone 
hoping to push toward a deeper understanding.
   But am I missing something? Are any of you aware of school based 
approaches that take a different tack?

Craig

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