Compound Sentences

-

What's a sentence made of?

At a minimum, sentences consist of a subject and a verb:

George sang.
The sun rose.

Sentences can get quite long, but they always have a subject and a verb.

The sun rose in the east.
The yellow sun rose slowly in the east.
the large, yellow sun of our planet rose slowly over the blue hills in the east, shining into my tired eyes.


Well, what's a simple sentence?

A simple sentence is also called an independent clause. An independent clause can stand alone. It contains a subject and a verb and a complete thought. For example:
  • Some students like to study in the morning.
  • She plucked another flower. (Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie)*
  • Joe plays cards with his friends every Saturday evening.

Compound Sentences.

Compound sentences are made up of at least two independent clauses and are connected together with a coordinating conjunction, typically preceded by a comma**:

for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. 
  • She plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. (Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie)
  • Susan became quite hungry, so she made a sandwich.
  • He tried to lift the package, but it was too heavy for just one person.
  • Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings, and he was obliged to walk about the room. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin)
The conjunctions for and yet are a bit old-fashioned now; nowadays because can be used instead of for, and but can be used instead of yet.

If you don't want to use coordinating conjunctions to connect the sentences, then you can use the semi-colon. transition words can be used as well.

  • She plucked another flower; she then ran with it to her mother.
  • Susan became quite hungry; therefore, she made a small sandwich.
  • He tried to lift the package; however, it was too heavy for just one person.
  • Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; he was obliged to walk about the room.

*Some of the quoted sentences have been modernized, altered, and/or shortened.
** This sentence doesn't have the comma (breaking my own rule!). If you have the same subject, then you don't need the comma. Both independent clauses here use the same subject:  compound sentences.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vocabulary

-
“without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” -David Wilkins And without a doubt, vocabulary stands as one of the most important parts of learning a language; not only words, but variations of the same words. This means synonyms, antonyms, synonyms, word forms, word lists, word families, and so on. Let's look at some these words. Synonyms Webster's Dictionary : one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses. Synonyms are important when you speak or write because it adds variation and melody to language. Sure, you can use the same word again and again, but how boring is that? For example: The puppy had filthy paws and a dirty coat. In this sentence, filthy and dirty are synonyms; the use of these words adds variations to the sentence and makes it more interesting. As a side note (for you more advanced people), a synonym can also be a word
Read more

Diary: Today's Class

-
In Today's class we practiced the relative clause. In this case it was An architect is a person who designs buildings . A computer is something I use that helps me write emails or create plans for class. We were using them in a way to help define words that the student might not know. You go into a store and you might need an item and you don't know what it is called. These structures will help you become more flexible with speaking. I need something that will clean dirty floors. Do you need a broom? A mop? I need the thing that I can use to present my PowerPoint. It's not always perfectly clear what you might want, but it limits the answer to something very specific. I don't need a toothbrush to present my PowerPoint! I probably need a 1) Computer 2) Projector
Read more