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Sentences
Sentences are made of two parts: the subject and the predicate. The subject is the person or thing that acts or is described in the sentence. The predicate, on the other hand, is that action or description. Complete sentences need both the subject and the predicate.

Clauses
Sentences can be broken down into clauses. For example: The boy is going to the school, and he is going to eat there. This is a complete sentence composed of two clauses. There are mainly two types of clauses: independent clauses and subordinate clauses. Independent clauses act as complete sentences, while subordinate clauses cannot stand alone and need another clause to complete their meaning. For example: Independent clause: The boy went to the school. Subordinate clause: After the boy went to the school

Phrases
A group of two or more grammatically linked words that do not have subject and predicate is a phrase. For example: The girl is at home, and tomorrow she is going to the amusement park. You can see that the amusement park is a phrase located in the second clause of t he complete sentence above. Phrases act like parts of speech inside clauses. That is, they can act as nouns, adjectives, adverbs and so on.

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Phrases
A phrase is a group of related words that 1. does not express a complete thought 2. does not have a subject and predicate pair One type of phrase is a prepositional phrase. Examples:

Another kind of phrase is a verbal phrase. Examples:

Even though these phrases contain nouns (pronouns) and/or verb forms, none of the nouns/pronouns/verbs are subjects or predicates. None of them work as apartnership. Also, these phrases do NOT express complete thoughts.

Clauses
Words and phrases can be put together to make clauses. A clause is a group of related words that contain a subject and predicate. Note the difference between phrases and clauses in the following examples:

Only one of the clauses is a sentence.

Clause #1 gives a thought or an idea that is COMPLETE, that can stand by itself, independent of other words. However, clause #2 gives an INCOMPLETE thought or idea, one that cannot stand by itself, one that needs some more words to make it whole. The word after changes the meaning, making the thought incomplete. After reading this clause, we are left hanging.

These two clauses illustrate the two kinds of clauses: independent clauses and dependent clauses An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject, a predicate, and a complete thought. A dependent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate, but does NOT express a complete thought.

Compounding Sentence Elements

Words, phrases, and clauses may be joined to one another inside a sentence with a conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions and, but, or, and nor may join subjects, predicates, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases or dependent clauses within a sentence. This process is called "compounding." The following examples show the process of compounding WORDS

PHRASES

DEPENDENT CLAUSES

When entire independent clauses (simple sentences) are joined this way, they become compound sentences.