Simple and Compound Sentences

What Simple and Compound Sentences means

In this grammar section we'll be looking at simple and compound sentences. So first let's start off with simple sentences. Now if you're taking this course I expect that you should already know how to construct these simple sentences. But just to remind you what they are.

I'll quickly go over these. So a simple sentence is basically when you have a subject plus a verb plus an object. So those three things together make up a simple sentence so we have a few examples here. The first sentence is taxes should be increased.

How to use it

Next we have children are the future of our nation and last. We have community service develops strong character individuals so I want you to notice that each of these simple sentences is only conveying one main idea to convey more than one idea in a single sentence. We use either compound sentences or complex sentences. We'll be talking more about those very soon.

So in these simple sentences we have our subjects in the blue color the verbs are in the purple color and the objects are in the red color. I want you to notice that objects are optional. They don't have to be there for a simple sentence but if you would like to add an object you can do that as well you will also notice that simple sentences can include other basic elements such as prepositions articles and so on. Now let's move on to the compound sentences.

So basically you have a compound sentence when you have two or more independent clauses that are connected together an independent clause is complete idea. The idea is complete in and of itself. So in a compound sentence we are connecting two complete ideas. Now the question is what do we use to connect these two independent clauses will we connect these clauses by using what are called coordinating conjunctions and when we connect these clauses using the coordinating conjunction we use a comma coordinating conjunctions are words like for and Naw but or yet so so let's look at some examples here's our first example.

Britain invested over one million pounds in books and France only invested one hundred thousand. Now I want you to notice that the word and here is a coordinating conjunction. We're using this coordinating conjunction to connect two independent clauses both of these independent clauses are complete ideas in and of themselves. So how do you know if an idea is complete Well there's an easy way to find out.

I want you to imagine that instead of the word and here there is a full stop a period imagine that the first class is a complete sentence. Britain invested over 1 million pounds in books. Now if you were to end this sentence here there would be no problem. It would be a complete idea.

So if we want we can simply end the sentence over here. Similarly we could just say France only invested one hundred thousand. That's also a complete idea. We can add a full stop there and leave this clause as its own sentence.

Practice focus

So that's how you know if we have an independent clause basically independent clauses are complete ideas. So we use compound sentences when we don't want to write these clauses as separate sentences instead of writing these clauses as separate sentences. We can just connect these two clauses by a coordinating conjunction in this case. We have used the word and also notice that we have used it with a comma.

Let's take another example. Switzerland rank the highest in 1999 but it was outranked by Britain the following year. Again I want you to notice that we have two independent clauses here. The first independent clause is Switzerland ranked the highest in 1999.

We can stop here and that will be fine. However we want to add extra information in this sentence. So we used the coordinating conjunction. But and we have added a second independent clause here.

And the second independent clause is it was outranked by Britain the following year notice that whenever we join two independent clauses together we have to use a comma with the coordinating conjunction. So we've used a common here and we've used to comma here. And when you use this comma and coordinate in conjunction together to join two independent clauses then what you have is a compound sentence. Now let me give you some examples of how to use different coordinating conjunctions so we'll start off with our first coordinating conjunction which is part here we have an example.