An independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a simple sentence. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate; it makes sense by itself and therefore expresses a complete thought.
Independent clauses can be joined by using a semicolon or by using a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so, however, etc...).
I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer. (This is a compound sentence made up of two independent clauses: I am a doctor and my wife is a lawyer.)
I want to be a nurse, but I need to receive my science degree. (compound sentence made up of two independent clauses: I want to be a nurse and I need to receive my science degree)
John walked to the park with his friend, Jim. (This is another simple sentence.)
A sentence is a linguistic unit consisting of one or more words that are grammatically linked. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command or suggestion.[1] A sentence is a set of words that in principle tells a complete thought (although it may make little sense taken in isolation out of context); thus it may be a simple phrase, but it conveys enough meaning to imply a clause, even if it is not explicit. For example, "Two" as a sentence (in answer to the question "How many were there?") implies the clause "There were two". Typically a sentence contains a subject and predicate. A sentence can also be defined purely in orthographic terms, as a group of words starting with a capital letter and ending in a full stop.[2] (However, this definition is useless for unwritten languages, or languages written in a system that does not employ both devices, or precise analogues thereof.) For instance, the opening of Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House begins with the following three sentences:
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.
The first sentence involves one word, a proper noun. The second sentence has only a non-finite verb (although using the definition given above, e.g. "Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall." would be a sentence by itself). The third is a single nominal group. Only an orthographic definition encompasses this variation.
In the teaching of writing skills (composition skills), students are generally required to express (rather than imply) the elements of a sentence, leading to the schoolbook definition of a sentence as one that must [explicitly] include a subject and a verb. For example, in second-language acquisition, teachers often reject one-word answers that only imply a clause, commanding the student to "give me a complete sentence", by which they mean an explicit one.
As with all language expressions, sentences might contain function and content words and contain properties such as characteristic intonation and timing patterns.
A compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both.
A complex sentence consists of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
A compound–complex sentence (or complex–compound sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.
Sentences can also be classified based on their purpose:
A declarative sentence or declaration, the most common type, commonly makes a statement: "I have to go to work."
An interrogative sentence or question is commonly used to request information—"Do I have to go to work?"—but sometimes not; see rhetorical question.
An exclamatory sentence or exclamation is generally a more emphatic form of statement expressing emotion: "I have to go to work!"
An imperative sentence or command tells someone to do something (and if done strongly may be considered both imperative and exclamatory): "Go to work." or "Go to work!"
Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.
—John Hersey, Hiroshima
It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
—Toni Morrison, Sula
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.
—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.
—Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
And a bonus:
Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.
