Sentences and Capital Letters

A sentence is a group of words that makes complete sense and tells a whole idea, like 'The cat sat on the mat.' If you only had the words 'the cat', you would be left wondering — the cat what? A sentence finishes the thought so the reader understands you completely.

Most sentences need two important parts: who or what the sentence is about (the subject), and what they do (the verb). In 'The dog barked', the subject is 'the dog' and the verb is 'barked'. Together they make a complete idea, which is why it counts as a proper sentence.

Every sentence begins with a capital (big) letter, and a telling sentence usually ends with a full stop (.). Capital letters are like a flag that says 'a new sentence starts here'. They make writing much easier to read.

We also use a capital letter for the names of people and places, the days of the week and months, and always for the word 'I'. So we write 'Sam', 'Paris', 'Monday', 'July', and 'I' — each with a capital — no matter where they appear in a sentence.

Sentences can do different jobs. A statement tells you something ('The sky is blue.'). A question asks something and ends with a question mark ('Where are you?'). A command tells you to do something ('Please sit down.'). An exclamation shows strong feeling and ends with an exclamation mark ('What a goal!').