Today I’m going to get nitty-gritty with some English grammar. A few years back I did a series of these types of posts that I called Punctuation 101. This led to my little book Punctuation 101. So, if you’re curious, check out some of those posts. I’ll also link to them by subject at the end of this post.
Before I get started, I want to just vent a little. Why, creators of the English language, do we have to have so many weird words for grammar? Why do we need to have multiple names for the same thing? Teaching this to myself was hard enough, but teaching this to fifth graders is a big challenge.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I’m going to use the correct terms in this post, and put the other, often more easy to understand terms in parentheses beside it. Hopefully that will help keep any confusion at bay.
So, can you tell the difference between a simple sentence, a compound sentence, and a complex sentence? Do you know when to use a comma? When to leave it out? Let’s take a closer look.
Simple Sentences
A simple sentence is an independent clause that expresses a complete thought. It has a single subject (noun) and a single predicate (verb). This subject and predicate are actually a team, since the subject needs to be doing the action in order to create an independent clause.
Luke ate the hamburger.
Beyond that very simple sentence I just shared, there are two other types of simple sentences, but before I tell you what they are, I want to talk about this word: compound.
Whenever you see the word “compound” in grammar, it’s going to be “pounding” two more more things together.
Let’s go back to our two, slightly less-than-simple sentence types. The first is a sentence that has a compound subject (noun). All that means is that there are two or more subjects (nouns) teaming up with the predicate (verb), both completing that same action.
Jack and Jill went up the hill.
Two people, doing the same action. It’s still a simple sentence, but it has a compound subject (also called a compound noun).
The other slightly less-than-simple sentence type has a compound predicate (verb). You guessed it. That means there is one subject (noun) teaming up to complete more than one action.
The dog ran and barked.
One subject (noun) doing two actions (verbs) creates a compound predicate (also called a compound verb).
No commas needed. Yet.
Compound Sentences
A compound sentence has two or more independent clauses that are hooked together with a comma and a coordinating conjunction, like the word “and.”
Luke ate the hamburger, and he was full.
Why the comma? You need a comma with that coordinating conjunction because without it, you’ll have a run-on sentence. I’ve always thought of it like this: a coordinating conjunction is too little to hold together two complete sentences on its own. It needs the added help of a comma. (Imagine that comma’s hook just latching on and holding on for dear life!)
Luke ate the hamburger and was full.
Since “was full” is not a complete sentence (it doesn’t have a subject!), the coordinating conjunction is strong enough to hold things together. This is actually a simple sentence with a compound predicate (verb). No comma needed.
Another way to look at it is that a coordinating conjunction coordinates. It likes things to match on both sides. If there is a complete sentence on both sides, it needs that comma to help it. But if it is merely attaching two words, then it wants to keep that even too and it doesn’t need a comma to do it.
Coordinating Conjunctions
There are seven coordinating conjunctions. They give equal importance to the words or sentences they connect. You’ve likely heard of the acronym FANBOYS to remember them by. Here is an image I made with examples for each. Note how I highlighted each coordinating conjunction in the example sentences and, if they needed one, the comma that goes with it. Look and see if you can identify independent clauses (and their subject-verb teams) on either side of the sentences that contain commas.
Complex Sentences
A complex sentence has an independent clause and a dependent clause (also called a subordinate clause). A dependent clause is a group of words that has a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought. Because of this, it is not a complete sentence and cannot stand on its own.
Luke was full when he ate the hamburger.
Above, “Luke was full” is an independent clause. It has a subject-verb team and expresses a complete thought. However, “when he ate the hamburger” does not express a complete thought. It does have a subject-verb team with “he” and “ate” but that pesky word “when” (which is called a subordinating conjunction) messed up a perfectly good sentence. It broke things.
I looked up the definition of the word subordinate. It means a person under the authority or control of another. I picture an angry coach yelling at a player on his team or a drill sergeant yelling at a private. That player and that private are subordinate to the coach and the drill sergeant.
Subordinating Conjunctions
A subordinating conjunction is a word or phrase that links a dependent clause to an independent clause. There are MANY subordinating conjunctions. Here are a bunch.
Subordinate and dependent mean the same thing in grammar. While we imagined that player and private being subordinate to the coach and the drill sergeant, we can also picture a mother and a baby or a nurse and an injured patient. The baby and the patient are dependent upon the mother and the nurse. So it is with dependent (subordinate) clauses. These groups of words are not in the right order to stand on their own. They need the help of more words to make them complete.
I ran outside. (independent clause)
(But if I add a subordinating conjunction to the beginning . . .) As soon as I ran outside.
The subordinating conjunction breaks my sentence. Now its a sentence fragment, and I need to fix it.
As soon as I ran outside, I slipped on the ice. (I added an independent clause.)
Note: Whenever a complex sentence begins with a dependent clause, a comma must separate the two clauses.
As soon as I ran outside, I slipped on the ice.
I slipped on the ice when I ran outside.
When Luke ate the hamburger, he was full.
Luke was full when he ate the hamburger.
So, there you have it. A little grammar review and a few comma rules to help you to stronger first draft writing—or at least a better understand when you go back to edit.
Need more help with the nitty-gritty? Here is a list of my Punctuation 101 blog posts:
Punctuation 101: Dialogue Tags
Punctuation 101: The Comma
Punctuation 101: The Colon
Punctuation 101: The Semicolon
Punctuation 101: Dashes and Ellipses
Punctuation 101: Apostrophes
Punctuation 101: Quotation Marks
Punctuation 101: Numbers
Any questions? Do you struggle with too many or too few commas? Do you struggle with runon sentences, comma splices (when you use the comma but forget the conjunction), or sentence fragments (that you didn’t do on purpose, because I LOVE sentence fragments in fiction)? Share in the comments.
Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Thank you for this! My goal latily is to learn how to write strong sentances. I have punctuation 101, most get it out again. Its not a one time read through ?
So true! That was the most boring book I ever wrote! Ha ha. Good stuff for reference when you need it, but super dry just to read. 😉
Thanks for this great post! Sometimes I find myself saying, “I’ve had punctuation down since third grade” but then I still do get confused whether certain sentences need commas! It’s good to remind yourself of those skills and continue to practice them.
Yeah, I teach it and I still find myself wondering if I have it right sometimes, then searching through the massive Chicago Manual of Style to find the answers. That book is amazing, but super hard to find what you’re looking for sometimes.
Since my Dad is a english teacher, I know EXACTLY what all of these are…..Dad has been drilling all of them into my head for years. So thank you for the grammar lesson 🙂
Yay, Dad! *high fives Macey’s dad*
AUGH! THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE! WHY, in the name of all that is pink and sparkly, does English have so. Many. Grammatical. Rules? Don’t get me STARTED on WORDS. There are SO MANY OF THEM.
One of the English teachers at my school just taught us this a few months ago. At first I was like, “Pfft! I don’t need GRAMMAR lessons! I do grammar very often and I’m quite good at it, thank you.” But then I realized that I had no idea what was going on. That you for the post, it helped me understand sentences better. Have a blessed day!
Hahahahaha. That’s hysterical. Yeah, I know it’s super boring. But at some point, when we’re nearing that final draft stage, we all need to do an edit for this stuff. Unless we can afford to pay someone, which has always been a dream of mine. 😉
Grammar! If you think ENGLISH is hard, try LATIN! It’s fun sometimes, but lots of work, lots of rules! And several languages are based on it! (Which makes those other languages easier to learn, fortunately.)
I personally cannot stand when people use no punctuation. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but when I read a sentence without punctuation, my brain just naturally reads it really, really fast, whereas the commas and etc. tell my brain where to stop? Like,
“Hello my name is Bob I really like to swing from trees eat ice cream and play baseball do you like to eat ice cream too”
Grammar is great! Except for when you’re translating latin, and you think you have that word down, just to find out its a perfect participle passive or something, and not the other tense you thought it was, so you have to go back and retranslate the whole sentence. Latin…
Which is what I’m supposed to be doing, but keep getting distracted from… ?
Riley G.! Mea amica Latinae! Salve!!
Firstly, your comment is a mood. Secondly, the only thing I can say is… at least Latin /has/ such rigid (and so many) rules? I’ve been trying to overcome my fear of the Romans and their cruel linguistics by reasoning to myself that at least Latin didn’t mug a bunch of different languages in a back alley, shake out their pockets, and eeny-miney-moe between their possessions, like some languages I could name. *cough* English *cough*.
No! Do not let yourself get distracted from your Latin, lest you forget your train of thought and be forced to attempt it all over again! Fugi, mea amica! Vince linguam! Credo in te!
…
(I fervently hope, with every ounce of blood in my veins and every second of time I have spent in Latin instruction, that that translation was correct. There is no terror like that in which you post Latin you know so well online in the hope you have not made an amateur mistake.)
That is how almost all of my fifth graders answer essay questions. One big paragraph with no punctuation or capitals at all! It’s a little maddening. That’s awesome that you know Latin. There’s got to be a cool way you can work that into a novel…
Oh, English. We just HAD to make even our language confusing. There are so many rules you have to memorize, and a billion words to remember. I’m learning Spanish, and it’s also pretty hard, as all of the nouns are masculine or feminine, and there seem to be never-ending amounts of tenses. At least English-creators didn’t make it THAT difficult.
Complex and compound sentences and conjunctions were the kind of thing that I learned about back in third grade (and not in this great detail), and then practically forgot they existed for years. I mean, sure, I used them all the time in writing, but I never really gave it much thought. Then, all of the sudden, at the beginning of this school year, I was thrown back into them, completely clueless. Thanks for this post though, it helped me understand them much more!
Yay! I’m so glad it was a good refresher. I took three years of Japanese, and it’s a very different type of language. It’s actually really easy to learn to speak it but super hard to learn to write it–the kanji, anyway. Languages are fun. I wish I spoke more of them.
I do most of my grammar-ing by instinct, which honestly gets me by quite well—but I am in COLLEGE and somehow don’t remember ever learning about this relationship between commas and coordinating conjunctions. I’ve wondered about it often; I could tell that sometimes a comma felt right and sometimes it didn’t, but I could never put my finger on why. XD Now I know! Thanks for the post.
Hooray! Mystery solved from random GTW blog post. Ha ha. I paid attention to none of this until about eight years ago when I first started doing the punctuation 101 posts and I was determined to understand ALL the rules. But there are always weird exceptions, plus the cool thing about being a writer is that once you understand the rules, you can break them on purpose, so that’s fun too.