La Phrase Française: Overview

A French sentence — une phrase — is the basic unit of expression: a structured combination of words that conveys one complete thought. French sentences are organized around a small set of obligatory ingredients (subject, verb, complement) and a flexible set of optional ones (adverbs, dislocations, parentheticals). They come in four functional types — making a statement, asking a question, giving a command, expressing emotion — and each type has its own grammatical and prosodic signature.

This page is the gateway to the sentences group. It surveys the four types, lays out the basic word-order rules that all French sentences obey, and links out to dedicated pages where each type is treated in depth.

The four sentence types

French grammarians, like English ones, divide sentences by their communicative function. Each type has a typical structure, a typical intonation, and a characteristic punctuation mark.

The four types map roughly onto English's four — Pierre arrived, Did Pierre arrive?, Leave!, What a beautiful garden! — but each French type has its own particularities. Questions, in particular, come in three different registers (intonation, est-ce que, inversion), each common in different contexts. Commands have only three possible persons (tu, nous, vous) and drop the subject pronoun entirely. Exclamations use a small set of dedicated words — quel, que, comme, qu'est-ce que — to mark the emotional charge.

Declarative sentences: the default

Declaratives are the unmarked type — sentences that make statements about the world. Marie est française. Il pleut. J'aime le café. The basic word order is subject + verb + (object / complement) — known as SVO.

French SVO is broadly similar to English SVO. Where English speakers run into trouble is with the position of pronouns, which sit before the verb in French rather than after it: je le vois (I see him), not je vois le. And with negation, which uses two parts (ne...pas) wrapping the verb: je ne le vois pas (I don't see him).

For everything declaratives can do — affirmation, negation, compound tenses, pronoun placement, adverb position — see the dedicated declarative sentences page.

Interrogative sentences: three registers

French has three ways to turn a statement into a question, and all three are alive and well in modern usage. The choice between them is a register choice, not a meaning choice.

Intonation — informal. Just raise the pitch at the end of the statement:

Est-ce que — neutral. Add the formula at the start:

Inversion — formal. Flip the subject and verb:

Every French speaker uses all three, often in the same conversation. Choosing the right one is part of speaking like a native — see the interrogative three forms page.

Imperative sentences: commands

Imperatives are the command type — used to give orders, make requests, give advice, or issue invitations. French imperatives drop the subject pronoun (just like English) and use a special set of forms derived from the present indicative.

The imperative exists only in three persons: tu (informal singular), nous (let's), and vous (formal singular or plural). For full conjugations, irregularities, and the placement of pronouns with imperatives, see the imperative sentences page.

Exclamative sentences: emotion

Exclamatives express surprise, admiration, indignation, or other strong feeling. French uses a handful of dedicated exclamatory words.

Quel(le)(s) + noun — the most common exclamation marker:

Que + clause — exclaiming over a quality or quantity:

Comme + clause — informal, equivalent to que:

For the full inventory of exclamative structures, see the exclamative sentences page.

Word order: the SVO core

All four sentence types build on the same underlying word order: subject, verb, object/complement. Variations from this order are systematic — they happen in specific places for specific reasons.

Pronouns invert this order: object pronouns go before the verb in declaratives, questions, and negative imperatives.

Inversion in questions: the verb-subject order takes over in formal interrogatives.

Imperatives drop the subject: command sentences have no overt subject pronoun.

Compound tenses split the verb: the auxiliary stays in the verb slot; the past participle follows.

The combination of these systematic deviations — pronouns to the left, auxiliaries holding the verb slot, inversion in formal questions, dropped subjects in imperatives — is what makes French syntax distinctive within the broader SVO family of European languages.

Obligatory subjects: no pro-drop (except in imperatives)

A feature that distinguishes French from many of its Romance cousins (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese): French sentences require an explicit subject. You cannot say *mange une pomme meaning I'm eating an apple — French demands je mange une pomme. The verb form mange by itself is not enough to identify the subject because French verb endings have eroded over centuries (the -e, -es, -e of the present-tense singular are all silent), so the subject pronoun carries the load that the verb ending does in Spanish or Italian.

The one exception is imperatives, which drop the subject just as in English. Mange (eat!), partons (let's leave), allez (go!) — no overt subject.

For impersonal verbs and weather expressions, French uses il as a dummy subject — purely grammatical, not referring to anyone. Il pleut (it's raining), il faut partir (one has to leave), il y a du monde (there are people around). This il is structurally obligatory; you cannot drop it.

Punctuation and the French space rule

A typographic feature unique to French: in formal typography, a non-breaking space precedes the punctuation marks ! ? ; : (and the closing chevron »). This is not a quirk to be ignored — it is the rule taught in French primary schools and followed by every French publisher, newspaper, and government document.

In casual digital text — text messages, tweets, comments — many French speakers omit the space before ! and ? because keyboards do not insert it automatically. Formal writing, published prose, and any context with editorial standards keeps the space.

The opening punctuation marks (period, comma, opening parenthesis) follow standard European spacing — no space before. The space-before rule applies specifically to !, ?, ;, : and the closing chevron.

Sub-clauses: how French sentences extend

French sentences can extend through subordination — embedding one clause inside another. The basic mechanism uses que, qui, quand, où, parce que, si, and a host of other connectives to link clauses into larger structures.

A key difference from English: French que (the conjunction that) cannot be dropped. Je pense tu as raison is ungrammatical; English I think you're right is fine. French requires the conjunction to be visible.

For the full system of subordination — relative clauses, completive que-clauses, conditional clauses, temporal clauses — see the dedicated subordinate-clause pages and the complex grammar group.

Discourse fluidity: dislocation and clefting

Conversational French uses two structures heavily that English uses only sparingly: dislocation (moving a noun phrase out of its usual slot and replacing it with a pronoun) and clefting (splitting a sentence in two with c'est ... qui / que).

Both structures emphasize the noun phrase being highlighted. Both are far more frequent in conversational French than their English equivalents. Avoiding them makes you sound textbook-flat; using them well is one of the markers of fluent natural speech. For details, see the dislocation page and the clefting page.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

French sentences come in four functional types: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative. The base word order is SVO, with systematic deviations for pronouns (which precede the verb), questions in formal register (which use inversion), imperatives (which drop the subject), and compound tenses (which split the verb across auxiliary and participle). Subjects are obligatory in declaratives and questions; impersonal il fills the dummy slot for weather, necessity, and presentation. Sub-clauses connect with explicit conjunctions — que cannot be dropped. Conversational French leans heavily on dislocation and clefting for emphasis. Formal typography uses a space before ! and ?. Each of these features is treated in depth on dedicated pages within the sentences group.