You have probably heard this before, "Go to your room," "Eat your vegetables," or "Keep your hands to yourself." Whether it was Mom, Dad or your favorite teacher making the command, each of these sentences was telling you to do something. The essence of imperative sentences is command. Imperative sentences give specific directions, and they end with a period. They can be written using any one of the four sentence structures. Another characteristic of imperative sentences is that are in the second person and they may contain the understandable "you" as their subject. All sentences must contain a subject, which is what the sentence is about, and in many cases it is easily recognizable, but imperative sentences can be written in such a way that the reader knows who the author is talking to without the author explicitly stating it. For example, in the sentence, "Go to your room," it is understood that "you" need to go to your room.
Declarative sentences are the most commonly used sentences. Declarative sentences simply make a statement. For example, "It's going to rain tomorrow," is a declarative sentence. Your day-to-day conversations with your peers are filled with declarative sentences. Declarative sentences can state one detail, either fact or fiction, or they can list several statements within a single sentence, but they always end in a period. Declarative sentences can be written in first, second or third person, and they can be written using any one of the four sentence structures.
The easiest way to remember the meaning of interrogative sentences is to think of being interrogated by the police. If you're being interrogated, you're being asked questions. Interrogative sentences ask questions. Although these sentences may contain elements of imperative or declarative sentences, if you are asked a question then it's interrogative. For example, "Blue is the best color, don't you think?" is an interrogative sentence because you are asked to to give your opinion, even though it contains a declarative statement, "Blue is the best color." Interrogative sentences are recognizable because they end with a question mark.
A favorite of young or casual writers, but rarely used in academic writing, is the exclamatory sentence. An exclamatory sentence expresses a strong emotion such as happiness, fear or anger. It s easily identified by the ending exclamation mark. Depending on the writer's intent, just about any sentence can be written as an exclamatory sentence. For example, a general statement such as, "I love pizza," could be rewritten to express strong emotion by using an exclamation mark, making the sentence an exclamatory one.