{"id":37,"date":"2022-07-13T16:54:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T20:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/communicating\/chapter\/basicelements\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T16:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:26:34","slug":"chapter-7","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/communicating\/chapter\/chapter-7\/","title":{"raw":"The Basic Elements of a Sentence","rendered":"The Basic Elements of a Sentence"},"content":{"raw":"
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\r\n\r\nUnsurprisingly, you are required to submit written assignments for any professional writing course. Your own level of comfort in this area will be different from that of other students,\u00a0 but like all skills, writing is improved through practice. All of us have strengths when writing and all of us have areas we can improve.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nWe're going to start small right now and focus on sentence-level issues that can harm your writing. This way, we have a common language as we discuss this topic.\r\n\r\nLet's start by going over basic grammatical terms that you will need to know for this section.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Clauses and phrases<\/h2>\r\n

When building anything, be it a car, a house, or even a sentence, being familiar with the tools you are using is important.\u00a0 For this course, grammatical elements are the\u00a0 main \"tools\" you use when building sentences and longer written works such as reports.\u00a0 As such, having some understanding of grammatical terminology in order to construct effective sentences is critical. If you would like to review some basic parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on), see the Parts of Speech Overview<\/strong><\/a> at the Purdue OWL website. Now let's get into it!<\/p>\r\n

The two essential parts of a sentence are the [pb_glossary id=\"210\"]subject[\/pb_glossary]<\/strong> and the [pb_glossary id=\"251\"]<\/strong>verb[\/pb_glossary]<\/b>. The subject is the topic being discussed; the verb conveys the action or state of being expressed in the sentence. When you combine these two elements, you get a [pb_glossary id=\"238\"]clause[\/pb_glossary]<\/strong>. All clauses must contain both a subject<\/strong> and a verb<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\nHere are two simple examples of a clause.\r\n

(1) I walk.\r\n(2) I eat food.<\/div>\r\n
Both sentences have a subject\u00a0<\/strong>and a verb,\u00a0<\/strong>so they are clauses<\/strong>. There are two types of clauses in writing: an independent clause<\/strong>\u00a0and a dependent clause<\/strong>.<\/div>\r\n

There are also [pb_glossary id=\"246\"]phrases[\/pb_glossary]<\/strong>, which lack either a subject or a verb or both, so they need to relate to or modify (i.e. change) other parts of the sentence. Don't worry about that too much, though. We are going to focus on clauses <\/strong>here.<\/p>\r\n

I<\/strong>ndependent<\/strong> clauses<\/strong>, also called main clauses, can stand on their own as a sentence and convey an idea. Let's look at some examples.<\/p>\r\nHere is a sentence:\r\n

The engineers stood around the table looking at schematics for the machine.<\/div>\r\nCan you identify the [pb_glossary id=\"210\"]subject[\/pb_glossary], [pb_glossary id=\"251\"]verb[\/pb_glossary], [pb_glossary id=\"238\"]clause[\/pb_glossary], and [pb_glossary id=\"246\"]phrase[\/pb_glossary] in that sentence? If not, that's okay.\r\n\r\nHere's a break down of the difference parts of the sentence.\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nNotice the independent clause<\/strong> (The engineers stood around the table) is a complete idea. If we took at the phrase, the independent clause would work as a complete sentence. The phrase<\/strong> (looking at schematics for the machine) is not. It has a verb (looking), but not a subject, which is why it isn't a clause<\/strong>. It could not be a complete sentence on its own.\r\n

Dependent<\/strong> clauses<\/strong> rely on another part of the sentence for meaning and can\u2019t stand on their own as a sentence.<\/p>\r\nHere's an example:\r\n

After they discussed different options, they decided to re-design the components.<\/div>\r\nCan you identify the different parts we have discussed so far? Below is a break down of the sentence.\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nSentence 2<\/strong> has one dependent clause<\/strong> and one independent clause<\/strong>, each with its own subject-verb combination (\u201cthey discussed\u201d and \u201cthey decided\u201d). The two clauses are joined by the [pb_glossary id=\"250\"]subordinate conjunction[\/pb_glossary]<\/strong>, \u201cafter,\u201d which makes the first clause subordinate to (or dependent upon) the second one.\r\n\r\nBeing able to identify the critical parts of the sentence will help you design sentences that have a clear and effective subject-verb relationship.\r\n\r\nIf you need some more guidance on clauses<\/strong>, please watch one or both of the videos below. The first video takes a humorous approach, while the second is more formal.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2oHcULKF_KI[\/embed]\r\n\r\n[embed]http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=hNT1D0JoFk8[\/embed]\r\n
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Sentence structures<\/h2>\r\nSentence structures are how we combine independent clauses<\/strong>, dependent clauses<\/strong>, and phrases<\/strong> to create complete ideas in our writing. There are four main types of sentence structures: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. In the examples above, Sentence 1 is a simple sentence, while Sentence 2 is complex.\r\n\r\nWe will go over each sentence structure now.\r\n\r\nSIMPLE SENTENCES <\/strong>have one main [pb_glossary id=\"238\"]clause [\/pb_glossary] and any number of phrases. Below is the formula for a simple sentence.\r\n
subject + verb<\/div>\r\nThe following are all examples of simple sentences:\r\n
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