Guide to Literary Terms Group

Question:

hotline123
hotline123
Student
High School - 9th Grade

What is a compound sentence?

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Posted by hotline123 on Sunday October 25, 2009 at 4:50 PM and tagged with grammar.


Answers:


  1. pohnpei397 Teacher
    Community / Jr. College

    eNotes Editor

    Best answer as selected by question asker.

    A compound sentence is a sentence that has more than one main clause.  A main clause has both a subject and a verb, but is not introduced by a subordinating word (like when, for example).

    So an example of a compound sentence would be

    "The wind blew, and the leaves fell."

    But "The leaves fell when the wind blew" would not be a compound sentence because "when" is a subordinating word and that means that "when the wind blew" is not a main clause.  Therefore, that sentence does not have two main clauses.

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    Posted by pohnpei397 on Sunday October 25, 2009 at 5:02 PM


  2. akannan Teacher
    Middle School

    eNotes Editor

    A compound sentence is a sentence that uses two or more independent clauses, oftentimes being connected with a conjunction.  These terms are usually preceded with a comma.  Compound sentences can be used to liven up writing that might be dominated with a series of simple sentences.  Sometimes, proper use of compound sentences can also vary up writing with its combination of sentences.  An example of a compound sentence could be "Roy spent more time with his friends, and Pam went to the store on her own."  In this sentence, two simple sentences are combined in the compound format with a conjunction.

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    Posted by akannan on Sunday October 25, 2009 at 5:03 PM