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Phrases, Clauses and Sentences, Oh my! a la Shmoop.

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Before everyone started speaking in fragments...

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...and before all communication consisted entirely of acronyms and abbreviations...

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...there used to be these things called "sentences."

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As a bit of a history lesson...

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...as well as something to help you compose an essay that won't make your teacher's stomach

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turn...

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...let's examine a sentence, and see what makes it tick.

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As you may already be aware, a sentence has both a subject and a verb.

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It also has things like a capital letter at the beginning and some form of punctuation

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at the end.

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A foreign concept, we know. But those are just the basics. To make a sentence

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really zing, pop, and wow...

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...you'll want to experiment with phrasing.

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Otherwise, your sentence is just going to lie there, like a dead fish.

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It's going to stink like one, too. So... what exactly is a phrase, and how do

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we use it to make our sentence awesome.

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A phrase is really just a series of words you add to an otherwise boring sentence to

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add description, explanation, context or color.

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Phrases are needy... they can't exist on their own. They need to be part of a sentence in

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order to survive. Total parasites.

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A phrase can also have a subject or a verb, but not both. It you're reading something

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with both, it's more likely a sentence.

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So, take a sentence like "The cat ran." Whoop-dee-do.

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If we add a phrase, we can turn it into "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran."

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Still not a thrilling story, but at least we can clearly visualize this freakish animal.

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"The cat with the extraordinarily long tail" is what's called a "noun phrase," because

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it contains a noun.

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The noun being "cat." Yeah, "tail" is a noun, too, but the cat is the subject here. Because

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without the cat, we'd just have a tail, floating in space.

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Which would really drive the neighbor's dog cray-cray.

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Well, if there's a noun phrase, there must also be a "verb phrase," right?

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You're so smart.

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If we turn our original sentence into "The cat ran through the courtyard singing show

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tunes"...

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...we've once again made our sentence more interesting...

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...except this time we're focusing on an action rather than on the physical description of

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a noun.

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So here, our verb phrase is "ran through the courtyard singing show tunes."

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We're guessing... something from Cats. Now, what if we do something totally nutso...

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...and combine our noun phrase with our verb phrase?

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We get, "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran through the courtyard singing

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show tunes."

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Now that is one cat we'd like to get to know a little better.

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However, there's one more tool we can use to make our sentence even more baller... a

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"clause."

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Put those away, cat. Other kind of "claws."

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A clause actually can contain both a subject and a verb...

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...but what makes it stand out is that it tells the reader a little something more about

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the subject than a basic, skin 'n bones sentence.

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We could say, "The cat ran, but he didn't make it to the bus on time."

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We don't have that detailed description of his tail, and we don't know if he was singing

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anything as he ran...

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...but it's certainly more informative than "The cat ran."

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We know what you're wondering. "Can we put together all three of these phrases, to make

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the most incredible sentence of all time?

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You betcha. "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran through the courtyard singing

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show tunes, but he didn't make it to the bus on time."

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Not only is this sentence insanely interesting, but it also contains a moral:

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Save your singing for the shower, unless you want to be late for cat school

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Having a knowledge of phrases and clauses in your back pocket will help you class up

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your sentences...

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...it will make your work more fun to read and, quite honestly, more fun to write, too.

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Just don't have too much fun. You don't want your teacher to catch you enjoying yourself.

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