Sentences: Ways of starting a sentence

So do the examples above include `proper' sentences?

Thundering down in torrents, rain came, battering the barren earth in merry glee.

So long as the sentence has a subject, verb and optional object, if it is needed to complete a thought, it does not matter in which order these appear. If I were to rearrange the words, I would get:

The rain came, thundering down in torrents (and) battering the barren earth in merry glee.

The subject is the rain and the action is `came'.  So, it does not matter whether the subject is at the beginning or in the middle; so long as it's there, and along with a verb (came), the sentence gets across a complete thought, it is a proper sentence.

Now, go over the following and ask yourself if they are complete or incomplete sentences:

1. The field is overgrown with grass.
2. I can't believe that
3. James running into the room in anticipation
4. She was in tears when she came up to me and apologised
5. Lush and green, the fields appeared in the morning glow.

The answers can be found in one of the posts in The Pear Tree website.