Theme: Compound and Complex sentence Content: introduction main part

"I enjoy steamed vegetables, although my mother prefers them to be roasted."
"You need to practise your guitar if you want to be in a successful band."
Complex sentences can be useful for presenting ideas that need layers of information and details. In order to understand complex sentences, it’s helpful to first look at simple and compound sentences.[2] To understand how to write a complex sentence, students will need to learn the different components of a complex sentence, including a main clause, connective and subordinate clause.

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  Main clause: This is the primary message of a sentence, it is important that the main clause makes grammatical sense independently.
  
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  Connectives: Connectives are joining words that children will be taught to use to connect phrases and clauses together and improve the flow of their writing.
  
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  Subordinate clauses: A subordinate clause usually begins with a subordinate conjunction. This part of the sentence follows a connective to add additional information.
  

Once you understand these components, you can start building your own complex sentence examples using this formula:
Complex sentence = main clause + connective + subordinate clause
Now that you understand what compound, complex and simple sentences are and how to form them, you will need to also understand how to punctuate compound and complex sentences correctly. Read the following quick tips and punctuation rule to correctly use punctuation in compound/ complex sentences.
As we have learnt, complex sentences are sentences that have two clauses. There can be two independent clauses (each having a subject and predicate), or an independent clause and dependent clause (missing a subject or predicate). Whether a comma is used between them depends on the types and positions of the clauses.

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  When a sentence includes two independent clauses, it can be joined by a conjunction OR a comma. For example, the two independent clauses - 'I have a cat.' and 'He has a nasty temper.' can be punctuated as follows: 'I have a cat, but it has a nasty temper.'
  
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    It is important to include a conjunction in the complex sentence example above because without it, you will have committed a punctuation error often referred to as a comma splice.
    
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  When a complex sentence contains a dependent clause like this one, a comma is not used unless the dependent clause comes before the independent clause. For example, the dependent clause 'Before I left the parking lot' does not make sense unless attached to the independent clause 'I checked to make sure my groceries were in the boot'.
  
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    When a complex sentence contains a dependent clause like this one, a comma is not used unless the dependent clause comes before the independent clause. For example, 'Before I left the parking lot, I checked to make sure my groceries were in the boot'.
    
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    If these positions are switched, with the independent clause first before the dependent clause, there would be no comma in the sentence. For example, 'I checked to see if my groceries were in the boot before I left the parking lot'.
    
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      Exception To The Rule :If the sentence is confusing or ambiguous without a comma, one may be used for purposes of clarity. For example, the sentence 'Louise didn’t call Jeff because she was angry' needs to be punctuated with a comma - 'Louise didn’t call Jeff, because she was angry'.
      

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