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Suppose I am writing a sign for my front gate to warn people of the dog in the yard. I would write "Warning: Dog in Yard" as opposed to "Warning: There is a dog in the yard". The former removes many words from the sentence but the meaning is still clear.

Is there a name for this kind of concise sentence where the articles, verbs and adverbs are removed? I have found I use this kind of sentence a lot in my day-to-day work where brevity is important.

Brendan
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    I don't have a name but would describe it with the adjective Terse. – Elliot Mar 08 '23 at 04:16
  • Your example is not a sentence precisely because it lacks a verb. It is a fragment or a type of shorthand. I am pretty sure this question has been asked more than once, it's here somewhere. – Mari-Lou A Mar 08 '23 at 06:51

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This style is known as headlinese (see Wikipedia); despite the name it is commonly found in a variety of contexts such as road signs. It typically involves (among other things) the omission of articles (a, an, the) and forms of to be, as in the example you cite.

alphabet
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Yes. In short (pun intended) this would be called a 'truncated' sentence. This is a sentence where a word or words are missing but are generally understood. Truncated sentences can be used to convey haste, urgency, tension, or informality, for example.

Examples:

He is shorter than I (am).

(I) Love it! (I) Just love it!

Got that? (Did you understand that?)

See Cambridge Dictionary: 'truncated' (adjective) made shorter or quicker, especially by removing the end of something

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