In terms of their function, sentences can be classified in four ways:
This exercise will give you practice in identifying these four functional types of sentences.
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Instructions:
Identify each of the following sentences as declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamatory. When you're done, compare your answers with those on page two.
- "How beautiful a street is in winter!" (Virginia Woolf)
- "Have the skillet hot and keep it well greased." (Ernest Hemingway)
- "We boarded our train with feelings of unbounded relief." (James Weldon Johnson)
- "Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water." (George Orwell)
- "Where were the blackbirds?" (Richard Jefferies)
- "Always obey your parents, when they are present." (Mark Twain)
- "The house was so big that there was always a room to hide in, and I had a red pony and a garden where I could wander." (W.B. Yeats)
- "Even now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork brings fragrant memories!" (Samuel H. Scudder)
- "Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humor and rouse one's spirits?" (George Bernard Shaw)
- "And whom should we see in the evening, but our two little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded man!" (William Makepeace Thackeray)
- "How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" (Zora Neale Hurston)
- "He was exceedingly poor, wearing only a ragged shirt and trousers." (James Huneker)
- "Quietly go in, sit down, look at your man until you have seen him enough, and then go." (H.G. Wells)
- "I looked tired, but my complexion was good." (Emma Goldman)
- "Not a man in London made a better boot!" (John Galsworthy)
