Sentences and full stops

What is a sentence? Many grammar writers, such as George Davidson (How to Punctuate, Penguin Bks) , define a sentence as a complete thought. For example:

Tuppence went to garden, selected a patch in the garden and dug up the tulips.
However, as Davidson points out a sentence like this one can be written as three thoughts.

Tuppence went to the garden. She selected a patch in the garden. She dug up the tulips.

The first sentence, about my dog Tuppence (who has not been digging up tulips in my garden), joins together several ideas using a comma and a coordinate conjunction "and". This makes reading this sentence smoother. However, there might be circumstances in which we might want to emphasize the repetition of an action for artistic effect. For example:

Tuppence went to the garden. She heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees. She barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.

This sentence (which Tuppence wants you to know is the truth) expresses the annoying and repetitive actions of Tuppence, the dog when she sees squirrels.

I define a sentence as a complete thought that use a subject and a verb. The subject, as you can see can be Tuppence (a noun) or she (a pronoun). Pronouns take the place of nouns in sentences when we already know the subject of the of the sentence. For example, if we repeated the subject "Tuppence" in all three sentences instead of the pronoun "she", the repetition would be very annoying.

A full stop or period exists at the end of complete thoughts to express complete ideas. A sentence with commas should join together ideas with the same subject.

Thus:

Tuppence went to the garden, heard a black squirrel chatting in the pine trees and barked again and again. When KB heard this, she rushed outside immediately.

Notice that I have joined only the first three sentences. All these sentences have the same subject, Tuppence.

Next week, I shall discuss semi colons and their use.

KB