Sentence Construction
“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
– Winston Churchill.
 

Watch the following video to quickly go through Sentence correction, phrases, and clauses

 
Let’s understand how to build an effective sentence.
 

• Dogs eat.
• Dogs eat hamburgers.
• The skinny dogs eat hamburgers.
• The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly.
• The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table.

The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table. Their owners don’t seem to mind.
 
Above-mentioned sentences can stand alone as complete thoughts. A group of words that contain a subject and a verb and express a complete thought is called an independent clause.
 
A coordinating conjunction would put the two sentences in a kind of equal relationship.
 
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners don’t seem to mind.
 
Adding a subordinating conjunction would make the second sentence dependent on the first.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table because their owners don’t seem to mind.
 
Independent clauses
 
Group of words that contain subject and verbs to make complete thought. It can be constructed as independent sentences.
 
Dependent clauses (Subordinate Clause)
 
Group of words that may contain subject and verb, but don’t make complete thought. It can’t be constructed as independent sentences.
 
Phrases
 
A phrase is a group of related words that lack a subject, a verb, or both. Phrases can never stand alone as complete sentences.
 
There are four types of sentence structure.

1. Simple sentence: These sentences have only one independent clause.
2. Complex sentence: These sentences have one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses.
3. Compound sentence: These sentences have two independent clauses.
4. Compound-complex sentence: These sentences have two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses.

 
Fun Fact: When ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘or’ links two independent clauses, it is always preceded by a comma.