Writing Tips has been archived and won’t be updated before it is permanently deleted.
For the most up-to-date content, please consult Writing Tips Plus, which combines content from Writing Tips and The Canadian Style. And don’t forget to update your bookmarks!
Any complete sentence has two main parts, called the subject and the predicate. The subject is what the sentence is about; it is often a noun or a pronoun. The predicate is the part of the sentence that makes a statement about the subject; the main part of the predicate is the verb.
Usually, the subject comes before the predicate in an English sentence:
However, the subject isn’t always first. There are three situations in which the subject appears after the verb instead of before it.
© Public Services and Procurement Canada, 2024
TERMIUM Plus®, the Government of Canada's terminology and linguistic data bank
Writing tools – Writing Tips
A product of the Translation Bureau