{"id":177,"date":"2024-02-01T18:00:23","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T23:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/grammarbasics\/?post_type=chapter&p=177"},"modified":"2026-01-26T14:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:10:47","slug":"combining-clauses","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/grammarbasics\/chapter\/combining-clauses\/","title":{"raw":"Combining Clauses","rendered":"Combining Clauses"},"content":{"raw":"
I hate talking on the phone. I love texting. I need a smartphone.<\/div>\r\n \r\n\r\nExamine these three sentences for a moment. What do you think of them? If these were in a piece of writing you were proofreading for a friend, what kind of advice\/feedback would you give?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nI'll tell you what I think. I think that, from a grammatical standpoint, these sentences are all perfectly correct. Each includes a subject, a verb, and a complete thought.\r\n\r\nBut as a reader, I don't like how they work together. They don't have any flow -- to me, they are starting and stopping abruptly. I'd call the writing choppy<\/em>. I also think the sentences are a bit confusing. If this person hates talking on the phone, why are they getting a new phone? Did the person even need to mention talking on the phone in the first place? I don't see how these ideas are connected to one another.\r\n\r\nSo, the sentences are grammatically correct, but they don't sound great, and they aren't clear. There are many ways to fix the problem (including scrapping these sentences and starting over). One way to improve these choppy sentences is to combine some or all of them into one longer sentence that indicates how they are related.\r\n\r\nTo do that, we'll need to introduce a new term: the clause<\/strong>.\r\n\r\n \r\n

Clauses<\/h3>\r\nA clause is a group of words that contains a subject<\/strong> and a verb<\/strong>.\r\n\r\nClauses can be classified several different ways, but we're going to focus on two types: independent and dependent.\r\n
Independent Clauses<\/h5>\r\nIndependent clauses (ICs) express a complete thought. They can be sentences all by themselves. That's why we refer to them as independent<\/em>; they don't any need help.\r\n\r\n \r\n

We ate all the food on our plates.<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nThis clause contains a subject (we)<\/em>, a verb (ate<\/em>), and it expresses a complete thought.\u00a0 An independent clause like this can also be considered a\u00a0simple sentence<\/strong>.\r\n

Dependent Clauses<\/h5>\r\nDependent clauses (DCs), also known as subordinate clauses, don't<\/span> express a complete thought on their own; they are not sentences by themselves. That's why we call them dependent<\/em> -- they need help to express a complete thought (and thus become part of a sentence). Here's an example.\r\n\r\n \r\n

Because we ate all the food on our plates.<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nI see a subject (we<\/em>) and a verb (ate<\/em>), but it's not expressing a complete thought, so it's dependent.\r\n\r\nNotice that I created that dependent clause by adding a word (Because<\/em>) to the start of that same independent clause we saw earlier. These words are called subordinating conjunctions<\/strong>. Every dependent clause will start with one. Here's a handy list:\r\n\r\n \r\n

\r\n

<\/a>Subordinating Conjunctions<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\nafter, although, as\/as if, as long as, as soon as, because, before, even if \/ even though, if, once, provided that, since, so that, that, though, unless, until, what \/ whatever, when \/ whenever, where \/ wherever, whereas, whether, which \/ whichever, while, who, whom, whose\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nDependent clauses can't function as sentences by themselves, as I've mentioned (a dependent clause on its own is a type of sentence fragment<\/strong>). Instead, dependent clauses function the same way adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases do -- they modify\/describe other things in a sentence.\r\n\r\nSo a dependent clause (DC) depends<\/span> on something else being added to create a complete sentence. But what is<\/span> that something? What do we need to add to the DC to help it out? The answer is -- an independent clause (IC).\r\n

Because we ate all the food on our plates.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n