How To Combine Sentences
Your writing would appear monotonous and uninspiring if all of your sentences were brief and of equal length. One way of avoiding this is to combine sentences. By varying the structure of your clauses and the size of your sentences, you can keep the text alive and the reader awake. This section will explore some of the techniques we can use to combine sentences.
There are mainly four kinds of sentences:
1) Simple sentences
2) Complex sentences
3) Compound sentences
4) Compound - complex sentences
Compound sentences
A compound sentence consists of two or more main or independent clauses. The clauses of a compound sentence are usually connected by a coordinating conjunction. Sometimes they are merely separated by a semicolon.
The most common coordinating conjunctions used to combine the clauses of a compound sentence are and and but. (The others are or, for, yet and so.)
- Donald took out his pen. He started writing. Donald took out his pen and started writing.
As you can see the conjunction and merely adds one idea to another.
- Susie was tired. She went on working.
- Susie was tired but she went on working.
- Those memories are haunting. I don’t want to live without them.
- Those memories are haunting me but I don’t want to live without them.
Here the conjunction but joins two contrasting ideas.
A conjunction can connect subject with subject, verb with verb, complement with complement, or modifier with modifier.
In the example below, the conjunction connects two verbs:
- Those memories haunt me. Those memories don’t depress me.
- Those memories haunt me but they don’t depress me.