How to start a sentence

Reading is great – and chances are, if someone picks up a book, finds a pamphlet or clicks onto an article (other formats of arranged words are available) they’ve got every intention of following it through to the end. However, if you do want to really keep people coming back and those eyes darting across the page, you’re going to want to ensure your writing is engaging, interesting and exciting.

There will be some constraints to the way you’re able to do this, based on the tone of the piece, the purpose (e.g. adhering to style guides for commercial writing) – but for the most part, a good way of adding oomph is to pepper in some funky sentence starters!

Statements

To strengthen statements, you can use a sentence starter to show just how important the following statement is. This is also a really good way of subtly inserting character opinions or even cementing unreliable narrators’ twisted belief systems!

• ‘Without a doubt…’ 
• ‘Unquestionably…’ or ‘Undeniably…’
• ‘Clearly…’

Viewpoint adverbs

Adverbs are extremely versatile – stick them in front of a verb, or even on the front of a sentence, and you’ve just amped up your writing! Depending on which one you choose to use, you can also subtly influence the reader to more easily come around to a specific point of view, or at the very least, be aware of a subtle sway of opinion.

• ‘Fortunately…’ or ‘Unfortunately…’
• ‘Honestly…’ or ‘Personally…’
• ‘Obviously…’ or ‘Actually…’

Argumentative essays

If you’re structuring an essay, one of the most important things to keep in mind is the structure, style and format – namely, whether the sentence starter will fit the tone of the piece and not dock you any marks! If you can refer to yourself, you could use classic examples like ‘In this essay I will…’ – but more often than not, you’ll have to get more creative.

• ‘In addition…’ or ‘Similarly….’
• ‘Views on [topic] include…’ or ‘[Author’s name] argues…’
• ‘Oppositional evidence suggests…’ or ‘However…’

Chronological starters

A good way of arguing points or recalling information that happened in order, chronological starters arrange information in order of importance, relevance or other classifications.

• ‘Firstly…’ or ‘Secondly…’
• ‘Afterwards…’ 
• ‘Next…’ or ‘Then…’

By frequency

Along the same lines of the chronological starters above, you can use sentence starters to set the scene and let the audience know how often something occurs, or whether it is totally unexpected for this occurrence to be happening.

• ‘Occasionally…’ or ‘Sometimes…’
• ‘Often…’ or ‘Always…’
• ‘Never…’ or ‘Usually…’

Sentence? Sorted!

I’m not here to tell you how to start a sentence – chances are, you have that covered already. These are just some examples that may come in handy depending on the different types of writing you’ve got to complete, and as always, the best place to find different sentence starters is to read widely.