Compound Sentences
What is a compound sentence?
A compound sentence joins two complete thoughts, or independent clauses, together. Independent clauses must contain both a subject and a verb and must make sense on its own. In a compound sentence, the clauses are usually related ideas. You can think of a compound sentence as two sentences that were mashed together in a grammatically correct way.
How do you connect two independent clauses?
Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction, which are the FANBOYS conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
Clauses:
1) I didn’t like school.
2) My teacher knew it.
Compound sentence:
I didn’t like school, and my teacher knew it.
Don’t forget to include the comma. If either the comma or the conjunction were missing, the sentence would be incorrect.
Use a semicolon, especially if the two clauses are clearly related. Since a semicolon essentially combines two sentences into one, the clause following the semicolon does not need to start with a capital letter (unless it starts with a proper noun, like a name).
Clauses:
1) My little brother can be really annoying sometimes.
2) Maybe I think he’s annoying because he’s younger than me.
Compound Sentence:
My little brother can be really annoying sometimes; maybe I think he’s annoying because he’s younger than me.