Clauses
By: Chance Messier
What are clauses?
A way to grammatically organize a sentence, consisting of a subject and predicate.
- Clauses have four different types, main, subordinate, adjective, and noun. All clauses have at least a subject and a verb.
Main Clauses
Every main clause have the this pattern: Subject + Verb = Complete thought.
- it is important that every sentence must have at least one main clause. Otherwise it will be considered a fragment, which is grammatically incorrect.
- Example:
Subordinate Clauses
Every subordinate clause will have this pattern: Subordinate conjunction + subject+ verb = Incomplete thought.
- The important thing to remember about subordinate clauses is that they can never stand alone. To finish a sentence, there must be a main clause attached.
Relative Clauses
A relative clause will start with a relative pronoun (such as who, whom, whose, which, or that) or a relative adverb (when, where, or why).
- The pattern for relative clauses looks like: Relative Pronoun or adverb + subject + verb = incomplete thought
- Relative pronoun as subject + verb = incomplete thought