Sentence Types? Really

This week we have the privilege to learn about the different sentence types. Don’t get too excited. As you might recall, these types include; simple, complex, compound, and wait for it, compound complex. Since we have already gone over what each sentence type consists of, I don’t feel the need to reiterate. My question for this week is, why do we have to learn sentence types?

I realize grammar is part of the journalism field. In order to be a great journalist, one must master his or her entire field. However, sentence types are where I draw the line. I understand that it is of vital importance to know what nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc are; but why sentence types? Will an editor ever come up to us and say, “I think you need more compound sentences instead of all those complex ones”? Or will he say, “I think you need to add a dependent clause to this sentence”? Since I haven’t worked in a real newsroom, I can’t be sure, but I highly doubt it.

So once again, I ask, why do we need to know the different sentence types? According to our book, “When Words Collide,” when studying how sentences are created, or in other words, sentence types, “it’s easy to feel so overwhelmed with definitions, exceptions, rules and regulations that we forget we are already experts.” So if these definitions and terms just confuse us, why study them? The book later goes on to say that the goal of studying these terms is good writing. I can’t see how these terms will make my writing better. In fact, from the confusion, I could see them making my writing worse. Anyone agree?