Complete Sentences

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Did anyone else have difficulty with the concept of complete sentences as a kid? Especially when they were expected in response to a question? Teachers would always keep saying that it's a complete sentence if it would make sense if somebody walked up to you on the playground and said it.. but they were always asking me to make these "complete sentences that would make sense on the playground" in response to something that had just been asked. I guess part of my frustration stemmed from how much trouble I had with handwriting, but being repeatedly told that what I said wasn't a complete sentence because it wouldn't make sense on the playground didn't make sense to me because it certainly did make sense in response to a question being asked; if someone walked up to me on the playground and asked that question, that's how I'd respond.
(Is this a literalness thing? I don't really think I'm all that literal, but I think that's because my parents read me the Amelia Bedelia books, so I understood the concept of literalness, and managed to avoid the most blatantly obvious literal interpretations.)

Oh I hated that!

The worse thing was the sentences given me would make no sense if someone came up and said it to me.

I am the other way. I am rigid about complete sentences and about grammar in general. I even text in complete sentences, with capitalization.

I generally do use correct grammar. What I never understood as a kid was the concept of a complete sentence in response to a question. A teacher might say "What color is the sky?" and I'd say "Blue." Then they'd tell me to say it in a complete sentence, so that it would make sense if someone walked up to me on the playground and said it. If somebody walked up to me on the playground and said "What color is the sky?" I'd still say "Blue," it didn't make sense that I was being told to answer a question as though the question hadn't been asked. (Of course, they never said it that way, or they would have sounded pretty silly themselves.. They would just keep repeating the same thing about saying it so it would make sense if someone said it on the playground.)

The playground explanation was a very poor one for the teacher to use, since playground conversation is likely to be less rather than more formal.

In simplest terms, a complete sentence is one that contains both a subject and a verb. That's the rule.

I agree it was a poor way to explain it. Our playground language was anything but the Queen's English.

I got the same treatment at school but they explained it better, e.g. they'd tell us what we should have said. It seemed very odd that a simple "yes" or "no" wasn't acceptable, but I was so used to their expectations having no sensible reasons that it didn't stand out as particularly weird. They were often inconsistent as well, e.g. they used to tell us not to begin a sentence with "And" but when I got to secondary school they said it was OK.

With time I developed a preference for good syntax, and became quite skilled at it (at least in writing). Mostly I preferred it because I found it easier to understand, but later on I noticed that it was quite possible to be perfectly clear without using particularly good grammar, so I concluded that as long as it does the job, sticking to "the rules" doesn't really matter.

Wonder what same teacher would have done if every time a test had spaces at top for,
Name _________________, Date___________,
you'd written "My name is ..." and "Today's date is . . . "

This was in elementary school.. they tried to do everything, ahem, simply, because the teachers were simple.. I don't have good memories of elementary school.


Yea, switching the "And" thing was weird.
About the inconsistent expectations, though.. I don't think I ever got used to them. Saying something that doesn't make sense doesn't make more sense just because you never make sense. I had really bad elementary school teachers, a lot of what they said was outright untrue. I remember many an argument about how many states of matter there were, and even when the eventually did acknowledge the existence of plasma, they kept up with some crap about it being something between liquid and solid, like jell-o. And don't get me started on all that BS about the sun being completely stationary and the galaxy not revolving..

One thing is that my parents both speak correctly, but didn't formally learn much grammar. Something about a teacher who was trying to teach some kind of experimental new grammar when they were in school. They both read a lot, so they knew proper English, and they read to me, so I did too. It was the stupid things that I was told by elementary school teachers that confused me.

I'm what one might call a "Grammar Nazi", but if I ask you a question I just want an answer. If I ask "Did you do X?" then all I need is "Yes" or "No", or maybe a "No, because...". If we were using the sky example, my answer would probably be: "The sky is blue, duh. Well, I suppose sometimes it's orange or shades of red, or maybe grey. At night it's a very dark blue and maybe even black, but.... *trails off*"

I vaguely recall (Well, in all honesty, I can only vaguely recall anything, so it's really just "recall") being taught taught about complete sentences, and at the time it made sense. I think that was because they were using good examples, but I wouldn't know.

I understand the question a little better now.

I was lucky in that I went to school in Québec where second language instruction was mandatory every day, so I was learning French grammar side by side with english grammar. As a result, S-V-O construction (subject-verb-object) and alternative contructions were very rule oriented learning and so I could adopt them easily.

"Gray" is a perfectly adequate reply to the question, "What colour is the sky?" (At least, it is in Vancouver, today!) The fact that, "Blue," does not stand alone as a complete, grammatical expression is absolutely irrelevant to its sufficiency as an answer to a question.

If the teacher had said, "Can you answer the question so that someone would understand what you mean without knowing what the question was?" It would have been clearer to me. One of the exercises we did when I was a child was to read a question silently off a piece of paper, answer the question, and then someone else had to say what the question on the card was.