The Complex Sentence

Learn About It

A complex sentence is made up of a dependent clause and an independent clause.

The dependent clause is joined to the independent clause with a subordinating conjunction.

Examples:

The independent clause or the subordinate clause may begin the sentence.

Emilie memorized the poem because she thought it was beautiful.

After she memorized it, she recited it for her friends.

* Notice that if the subordinate clause comes first, you must add a comma. If the independent clause is first, you don't need a comma.

There is not much to say about the independent clause. It is acting all by itself and does not need any help. It can stand alone, and in the case of a complex sentence, it is nice enough to help out those cute little subordinate clauses! (How kind!)

A subordinate clause cannot stand alone. It needs to be linked to an independent clause with a subordinating conjunction Do you remember those things? Good.

Here are a couple of example sentences:

Understand the complex sentence? Learn about other sentence structures.

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