Ory's Writing Notes: Clauses part 1, Independent vs. Dependent Clauses.

Clauses, the climax of writing! Everything we've been working on has lead to this moment, for every part of speech: Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Predicates, subjects, objects, indirect objects, subject complements, object complements, Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, interjections, Verbals, and phrases are used in the construction of Clauses.

What is a clause?

A clause is a group of words that has both a subject and a predicate. Let me be clear, every simple sentence is a clause, but not every clause is a sentence. (Does that make sense?)

There are two forms a clause can take, independent and dependent.

Independent clauses make sense by themselves. They express a complete thought.

Example: Katie/ went out dancing. (Katie is the subject. Went out Dancing is the predicate.)

Dependent clauses do NOT make sense by themselves. The difference between an independent clause and a dependent clause is that a dependent clause usually starts with a subordinating conjunction, a relative pronoun, a relative adverb, or some other word that turns an independent clause into a dependent clause.

Example: (Although) Katie went out dancing.

The although turns my original independent clause into a dependent clause. For a dependent clause to make sense you need to attach it to an independent clause.

Example: Although Katie went out dancing,/ she did not feel better about her father's death.

Independent: She did not feel better about her father's death. (This makes sense by itself.)
Dependent: Although Katie went out dancing, (This does not make sense by itself.)

A dependent clause can be placed at the start of a sentence, the middle of a sentence (in between the subject and predicate) or at the end of a sentence.

Beginning: Although Katie went out dancing, she did not feel better about her father's death.
Middle: Katie, although she went out dancing, did not feel better about her father's death.
End: Katie did not feel better about her father's death, although she went out dancing.

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I'd like to end this blog post with saying that there are three types of dependent clauses: Adjective, adverb, and noun dependent clauses. Due to the complexity of each, we will be looking at them separately instead of them all in one big blog post.