Word order

Word order is rarely the answer to a single cloze gap. It earns points in the missing-sentence-parts task, where the piece has to sit flush at the seam, and it takes points away in two places at once: in editing, where a pronoun repeating the subject is a standard extra word, and in your own writing, where a wrong order eats into the language marks in every paragraph.

So there is no chapter on parts of the sentence here. There are items from those tasks, and the rule arrives at the point where you trip over it.

The item that brought you here

You most likely came from the missing-sentence-parts task, from this exact item. Do it once more.

Notice what you did not do. You did not work out what the paragraph is about. You looked at which position in the sentence had been left empty and took the thing that fits that position. In English, position is the grammar.

The rule and the table

Position assigns the role, not an ending. Most languages in this room mark who acts with a case ending or an article: German has Den Uhrmacher rief der Rat against Der Uhrmacher rief den Rat, Russian lets you put the object first and keeps the meaning. English lost those endings on the noun, so the only thing left to tell the doer from the thing done to is the position: before the verb the doer, straight after it the thing. The clock stopped the town and The town stopped the clock are built from the same words and say different things.

There is one subject slot, and it is already taken. A sentence has exactly one subject. If a relative clause has come between it and the verb, you may not name the subject again with a pronoun: The engineer who found the fault she straightened it gives one verb two subjects. In editing, it, he, they in that position is a standard extra word.

A fronted adverbial of time or place moves nothing. Yesterday I went, In 2019 the council paid: the adverbial stands before the subject, and the subject still stands before the verb. In German the same fronting forces the verb into second position and the subject behind it (Gestern ging ich), which is why this error is so common here. One small group of openers is the exception: a negative or limiting word at the front, Never, Rarely, Not only, Only then, pulls the auxiliary ahead of the subject, as in a question: Never have I seen, Only then did the council pay. That is formal English and you meet it mostly in reading; after any other opener, subject before verb.

Nothing comes between the verb and its object. I like very much this film is the error that travels from almost every other language, because German and Russian both have a middle field that happily takes an adverbial there. English keeps the two together and sends the adverbial to the end: I like this film very much.

A frequency adverb has a shelf of its own. Always, never, often, usually, already go after be, after the first auxiliary (a function word such as has, will, can standing in front of the main verb), and before the main verb when there is neither.

An indirect question is no longer a question. Where is the station? is a question, and its verb is out in front. Can you tell me where the station is? is a question only in its first half; everything after tell me is an ordinary statement with ordinary order. The mistake is instantly audible to an examiner, which is why it is worth attention even where no gap tests it.

The rule has been read; now it is tested in four tasks in a row. The first is editing, where the taken subject slot is visible right there in the line.

The same order in editing and in the gaps

First the taken subject slot, as editing prints it: some lines carry a pronoun that names the subject a second time.

The taken subject slot is settled. The next item breaks somewhere else: not at the subject, but at what stands in front of it.

The fronted adverbial is settled. In the next item the adverbial is not at the front but in the middle of the sentence, and you have to choose between two positions that both look possible.

You have found the adverb's shelf. The next item is an open gap, and what goes into it is a single word: the very word that shows the question is over.

In your own writing it costs the most

The blog comment is marked on four criteria of five points each, and two of them, range and accuracy, are about language: ten of the twenty points. Word order is visible to the marker in every sentence rather than at one marked spot. Four decisions follow, the kind you make while writing.

The object stayed with its verb. The next decision is about the same position, except that what arrives there is not an adverb but a time expression.

The place of the time expression is settled. The next decision is about the frequency adverb, and there the error registers less with the eye than with the ear.

You have put the adverb after be. The last decision is about the question you ask your reader inside a sentence of your own.

Editing: the word that fills no slot

Editing has one more way to break the order of a line: a word that has nowhere to stand. Read each line as a set of positions and look for the word left over.

An English clause is a row of slots: a doer (the subject), a verb, and after some verbs an object, the person or thing the verb acts on, as in The council paid the bill. The extra word in editing is often simply the one that fills no slot.

there at the start of a sentence about what exists needs be. There opens a sentence about what exists only together with a form of be: there is, there was, there are. When no be follows it and the line has its own doer and verb, there is one word too many: the same quarrel begins stands on its own. In From May there is a night bus, by contrast, is is the verb and there belongs. The there of place, as in I live there, is another word and stays.

Some verbs take no object. In the sense of something happening to the subject on its own, fade, arrive, happen and disappear take no object: team spirit fades, the bus arrives. A them or it after such a verb has nothing to point at, so in team spirit slowly fades them the word to strike is them.

No itself after a verb that acts alone. When settle, begin, happen, grow or fade describe something that happens to the subject by itself, an itself or themselves after them is one word too many: the floor settled, the season begins. Dress is different, because you dress somebody; in The children dressed themselves the word fills the object slot and stays. For these two kinds of verb the check is one question: in this sentence, is there a second person or thing the verb acts on? If the subject simply settles, grows or fades, an object or itself has nothing to name, and it is the extra word.

What to take away

Three places where this earns or costs marks:

Missing sentence parts: the seam holds on exactly this Editing: there a second subject is the extra word Blog comment: there word order is visible in every sentence