Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a ...

Whenever you are re-structuring sentences, keep in mind that you have plenty of readily-available, effective tools to employ. A particularly useful one consists of four parts — they are the rhetorical ...

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, ...

A complex sentence communicates more than one idea. One part (the main clause) is like a simple sentence: it can stand on its own. The other part (the minor clause) gives more detail about the simple ...

More than four years ago, a Miami, Florida-based Forum member posted a question about an English-grammar book’s classification of sentences into five types, namely simple, compound, complex, ...

Last week, we started discussing the differences between a phrase, clause and a sentence. We defined a phrase as a group of words without a subject and a predicate, though standing together to form a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Natalie Wexler is an education writer focusing on literacy. When students can’t understand what they’re reading, it may be because ...