Chapter 5

Main Clauses

5.1 Identifying Main Clauses

When you studied prepositional phrases and verbal phrases, you learned that a phrase is a group of related words without a subject and a verb. A group of related words with a subject and a verb is called a clause. There are two kinds of clauses, main and subordinate, but this chapter will deal only with the main clause (also called an independent clause).

To identify a main clause, look first for the verb and then for the subject. The main clause can stand alone as a sentence if the first word is capitalized and the clause ends with a mark of punctuation such as a period or a question mark. The main clause may also contain words or phrases in addition to the verb and the subject.

Exercise 5.1 ...

Get Better Grammar in 30 Minutes a Day now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.