'I laughed' is a complete train car — it can travel alone. 'Because I laughed' needs to hook onto another car to make sense. Clauses combine into simple, compound, and complex sentences the way cars link into different trains.
Clauses are the building blocks
A clause has a subject and a verb. An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence; a dependent (subordinate) clause cannot. Combining clauses gives sentence variety: a simple sentence has one independent clause, a compound sentence joins two independent clauses, and a complex sentence joins an independent clause with a dependent one.
Link two independent clauses with a comma + conjunction ('I ran, and I won') or a semicolon. Joining them with only a comma creates a comma splice — an error.
Tap a word to cycle its part of speech.
Tag the words to spot the subject and verb that anchor each clause.
- Read: 'Because it rained, the game was postponed.'
- Find the dependent clause and the independent clause.
- Classify the sentence type.
What you should see: 'Because it rained' is dependent; 'the game was postponed' is independent — one of each makes it a complex sentence.