Some sentences tell something: “The cat sleeps on the bed.” “I have a red bike.” They are called telling sentences, and they are the kind we write most.
A telling sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a period (.), a small dot that means “this idea is done.”
Key idea
A telling sentence tells something. It ends with a period.
Why it works
When you read aloud, your voice drops and you pause at a period. The period tells the reader to do the same: stop, then start the next idea.
Worked example: Where do the periods go?
“We went to the lake the water was cold”
- Read it aloud and listen for where one idea stops.
- The first idea: “We went to the lake.”
- The second idea: “The water was cold.”
- Put a period after each, and a capital at the start of the second.
Answer: “We went to the lake. The water was cold.”
Common mistake
Putting a period at the end of every line on the page, even in the middle of an idea. A period goes where the idea ends, wherever that is on the line.
For the grown-up. Reading the writing aloud together is the best check: wherever your voice stops, there should be a period.