William Writer, a brilliant scientist, sat at his desk in deep thought. There were so many ideas in his head, but he didn’t know how to explain them to others. He decided he would make eight friends–Iggy Interjection, Vinnie Verb, Alvin Adjective, Angie Adverb, Nancy Noun, Priscilla Pronoun, Clark Conjunction and Penny Preposition–to help him share his ideas. He created these friends out of ink and called them “words”. He decided he would place these eight friends on paper to create what he called “sentences.” These sentences would help him share his ideas with others. Each sentence was a thought. By creating and combining these thoughts, he could share his ideas with others.
Iggy Interjection was the loudmouth of the group. He would always scream out words like, “BAM!”, “WOW!”, or “COWABUNGA!” Iggy Interjection was very emotional and always shared his feelings.
Vinnie Verb was a man of action. He was often running, jumping, walking, playing or swimming. However, at times he would sit by himself and stare into space. When asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I just want to be. I want to exist. Is that so wrong?”
Alvin Adjective and Angie Adverb were brother and sister. They were into detail. They liked to describe things. Alvin Adjective was in love with Nancy Noun. At times the two were inseparable. He described her using words such as “pretty”, “stable” and “kind”. Alvin Adjective also liked to spend time with Priscilla Pronoun.
Angie Adverb was in love with Vinnie Verb. She loved describing how “quickly” he ran, how “nimbly” he walked and how “gracefully” he swam. She just loved words that ended in the letter “l” followed by “y”. When Vinnie Verb would just sit and stare into space, she would often sit down right next to him.
Nancy Noun was a magic being. She could change her shape and become many different things. Sometimes she would be a person. Sometimes she would be a place. Sometimes she would be a thing. Sometimes she would try to become something that only existed in the mind. That was difficult.
Nancy Noun had a jealous sister, Priscilla Pronoun. She would often try to take the place of Nancy Noun when William Writer decided to make sentences. Sometimes William Writer felt that Priscilla Pronoun did things better than Nancy Noun, but Nancy Noun did have unique skills. Nancy Noun was more precise than Priscilla Pronoun. Because of this, Nancy Noun was often used first when William Writer made sentences. Priscilla Pronoun usually played second string, coming in to replace Nancy Noun.
Clark Conjunction was the clingy one of the group. He would often lock arms with others–one with his right and the other with his left. By doing this, he joined things together.
Penny Preposition was the last word that William Writer created. She was created after Nancy Noun married Vinnie Verb. Sometimes he needed to connect things to them as a couple. Clark Conjunction just didn’t work well for this task. He worked when William Writer wanted to connect something to one of them, but when he wanted to join something to them as a couple he needed another word. Penny Preposition was the woman for the job. The thing–or object–she connected was called the “object of the preposition”. She not only connected her objects to the married couple, but in doing so helped to answer who, what, where, when, why or how the object was connected.
William Writer called his process of creating sentences “writing.” He soon found it was very difficult. Although his eight characters were powerful, they just could not get the job done. He decided to make families of each character. So, he created families of Interjections, families of Verbs, families of Adjectives, families of Adverbs, families of Nouns, families of Pronouns, families of Conjunctions and families of Prepositions.
Each member of the family looked different, but they all shared common traits. All the Interjections were emotional and liked to share their feelings. All the Adjectives liked to describe things and hang out with the Nouns and Pronouns. All the Adverbs liked to describe things and hang out with the Verbs. All the Pronouns were jealous of the Nouns and tried to take their places in sentences. All the Prepositions helped to connect things to the marriage between nouns and verbs. These things were called the “objects of the preposition.” The Prepositions answered who, what, where, when, why or how their objects were connected to the married couple.
The Verb family was a little strange. Some of the Verbs were always active. Some of the Verbs liked to sit, stare out into space and mutter “I just want to be. I want to exist. Is that so wrong?” Some of the Verbs acted both ways.
The Nouns were the most diversified family. Some of the Nouns decided to be people. Some of the Nouns decided to be places. Some of the Nouns decided to be things. A few of the Nouns decided to become things that only existed in the mind. This was difficult to do.
William Writer created so many words, that he needed a place to store them. He decided he would put them in a big book. He called this book a “dictionary”.
William Writer now had all the friends he needed to convey his thoughts, but he found writing was hard. He just could not put the friends together in any order. When he did this, things did not make sense. He stared out his window to try to come up with a solution. Across a field, he could see two football teams playing. He noticed that the teams used formations. While each play was different, there were only a few ways they lined up to begin the plays. There were set patterns they used to organize their plays. “There should be patterns I can use to organize sentences,” he thought.
He was intrigued by the running back. He noticed that he did not do the same thing on every play. On one play, he ran with the ball. On one play, he blocked so another player could break free. On one play, he passed the ball. On another play, he faked while his teammate ran the other direction. Although he was one player, he often took on different roles. “Perhaps,” he thought, “if each of my words could take on different roles then they could be more effective at making sentences.” These various roles he called “parts of a sentence.”
William Writer went to work. Every sentence had to be about something. William decided to call that something a “subject”. Being the center of attention, subjects could become selfish. “Selfish subjects,” he thought. “It just doesn’t seem right.” He was a bit of a romantic so he decided to marry the subject to a verb. He decided a subject always needed to be married to a verb. Being married, the subject could not become too selfish. He also decided that on rare occasions the subject could serve as the invisible partner in the relationship: there, but not seen. This would also stop the subject from becoming too self-centered. This union would form the basic structure of a sentence. Nouns or pronouns generally played the role of being the subject. Verbs were verbs. They were so important that the role they played in the sentence was just being themselves.
William Writer soon found that the union of subject and verb was not enough to convey his thoughts. At times, simple thoughts could be conveyed with just these two parts. For example, the sentence, “William ran.” It was quite simple, but did express a complete thought. However, sometimes there seemed to be something missing. For example, the sentence “William takes.” But, what does he take? That was a big question that needed to be answered. The subject was performing the action of the verb, but what was receiving the action? William Writer decided that certain actions needed to be done to someone or something. He decided to call this the “direct object.” He called it “direct”, because it directly received the action of the verb. He called it an “object”, because he had to call it something and “object” seemed to fit just as well as anything else. He now had another basic sentence structure: subject plus verb plus direct object.
However, at times the verb was not a verb of action. At times the verb just wanted to be. It wanted to exist. And, in the verb’s defense, was that so wrong? However, this brought about confusion when the verb was married to a subject. For example, consider the sentence “He is.” William Writer thought about this sentence. “What is he?” It just didn’t make sense. He had to be something. The thought could be completed with an adjective. For example, “He is handsome.” Or, the thought could be completed with a noun. For example, “He is a boy.” He decided to call both of them a “complement.” In these type of sentences the verb acted like an equal sign. He equals handsome; or, he equals a boy. All of William Writer’s friends jokingly called the complement a “complete-ment”, because it completed the thought. He now had another sentence structure: subject plus verb plus complement.
William Writer soon realized that it was not only the married couple, subject and verb, that needed a complement. As he wrote sentences, he realized that at times a direct object needed a complement: for example, the sentence, “Jill considers Jack.” It just didn’t seem right. It seemed to be missing something. What does Jill consider Jack? William Writer finished the sentence, “Jill considers Jack a friend.” Now it had a complement and made sense. He had another sentence structure: subject plus verb plus direct object plus complement.
One day William Writer was writing a sentence. He wrote “Jack gave water.” He sat down and thought about it for a while. “Who did Jack give water to?” was the question on his mind. He had a subject, a verb and a direct object. However, this just didn’t seem sufficient. At times, the direct object was given to someone or something. In this case he decided to give the water to Jill. So his sentence read, “Jack gave Jill water.” He called the person, place or thing that received the direct object the “indirect object.” Now he had another sentence structure: subject plus verb plus indirect object plus direct object.
William Writer soon realized there was another way to finish an idea when he joined a subject with a verb that just wanted to be or exist. The verb did not always need to function as an equal. Sometimes things made sense when he just added some detail to the verb. Since it added detail, it was similar to an adverb. He called this an adverbial. The sentence, “They are.” does not make as much sense as, “They are on the bus.” So he had his final, basic sentence structure: subject plus verb plus adverbial.
These basic sentence structures were like the trunk of a tree. They provided basic support, but much could be added. Two trees could have similar trunks, but look very different. The same is true of two sentences.
As William Writer began to write, he found people did not understand his ideas. All his sentences ran together. They just did not seem to flow smoothly. He thought about the football game he watched. The game had referees. These referees helped to maintain the flow of the game. Without them the game could easily break down into chaos–just like his sentences. He decided he needed to make referees for his sentences. He called these referees “punctuation marks”.
William Writer created three punctuation marks to use for ending sentences–the period, the exclamation mark and the question mark. The period was the simplest way to end a sentence. Because it was simple, William Writer decided to make it a simple dot. Its function was simply to end a sentence. However, there were times when he wanted a sentence to convey strong emotion and to make a point forcefully. He decided he would keep a dot, but put a line standing tall above it. The line stood tall because it was making a bold statement. He called this an “exclamation mark”. At times he wanted to ask a question or state something he was unsure about. For this he created a “question mark”. Above the dot he made a loop with a short line at the bottom. It looked a little like an ear with an earring on the bottom. He thought this was appropriate, since it reminded him of his mom’s ear. She was the one that listened when he asked questions.
William Writer now had the basic rules he needed to convey thought. Having accomplished that task, he was really tired. He slipped off into blissfully slumber–his mind filled with well-organized thoughts.
