Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a ...

A conjunction is a word, or words, used to connect two clauses together. A subordinating conjunction is the word/words used to link two clauses together, a main clause and a subordinate clause. The ...

IN this column last month (“The relative importance of main clauses and subordinate clauses,” December 11, 2010), I explained to Dr. A, a medical doctor in New Jersey who teaches ESL to students on ...

If you ever want to clear a room, a single word will usually do the trick: grammar. For anyone who had a hypercritical English teacher or a particularly persnickety aunt — and that’s a lot of us — the ...

An independent clause is basically a complete sentence; it can stand on its own and make sense. An independent clause consists of a subject (e.g. “the dog”) and a verb (e.g. “barked”) creating a ...

A dependent clause cannot stand alone, though they often contain both a subject and a verb. Where independent clauses express complete thoughts, dependent clauses do not, and left on their own, ...

We are concluding our discussion on phrases, clauses and sentences today. In the last two classes, we compared the three, underlining how a sentence is usually a combination of clauses and phrases. We ...