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Sentences and full stops

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Clear sentences make clear writing. Here you will learn the three main sentence types and how to avoid the most common punctuation mistake in secondary school writing: the comma splice.

Clauses

A clause is a group of words with a verb and someone or something doing it.
A main clause makes sense on its own: 'The bell rang.'
A subordinate clause does not make sense on its own: 'when the bell rang'.

Three sentence types

The comma splice

A comma cannot join two complete sentences on its own.
Wrong: 'It was late, we went home.'
Right: 'It was late. We went home.' or 'It was late, so we went home.'
Every sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.
Worked example

Fix this: 'The film was long, I fell asleep.'

  1. Two main clauses are joined only by a comma: a comma splice.
  2. Option 1: use a full stop: 'The film was long. I fell asleep.'
  3. Option 2: use a conjunction: 'The film was so long that I fell asleep.'

Answer: 'The film was long. I fell asleep.' or 'Because the film was long, I fell asleep.'

Key idea

Simple = one main clause. Compound = two main clauses joined by a conjunction. Complex = main clause plus subordinate clause. Never join two sentences with only a comma.

The interactive lesson includes the diagrams for this topic.

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