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, ...

I did not plan on publishing a blog post today, because while I had something ready to go, the release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report seems poised to dominate another full day of public ...

A masteral student in Myanmar doing comparative research on the four types of sentences in English — namely simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex — asked for help in early December on how to ...

Clear sentence structure depends on establishing where a sentence ends and the next one begins. Every sentence must have an independent clause. The clause is called independent when it includes a ...

Last week’s column that discussed the use of comas, semi and full colons, and mentioned dependent and independent clauses in passing, elicited an email response from a reader who sought to know what ...