Independent and Dependent Clauses Build Sentences

Hey there — I'm Quill, and today we're going to unlock one of the most powerful moves in writing: building complex sentences from clauses. A **clause** is a group of words that has both a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a verb (the action or state). Every complete sentence needs at least one clause, but not every clause is a complete sentence. Here's the key difference: An **independent clause** expresses a complete thought all by itself. Read this: *The dog barked loudly.* It has a subject (the dog), a verb (barked), and it makes sense on its own. You could put a period after it and walk away happy. A **dependent clause** also has a subject and a verb — but it doesn't express a complete thought. It depends on something else to finish the idea. Try reading this: *Because the door was left open.* Something feels unfinished, right? Your brain is waiting. What happened because the door was open? That "because" is a **subordinating conjunction** — a word like *because, although, when, since, if, while, after, before, unless* — and it's the signal that a clause is dependent. It hooks the clause onto another idea. When you join a dependent clause to an independent clause, you get a **complex sentence**: *The dog barked loudly because the door was left open.* Both parts share one complete thought. Order matters a little: if the dependent clause comes first, add a comma after it. If the independent clause comes first, no comma is needed. - *Because the door was left open, the dog barked loudly.* (comma after dependent clause) - *The dog barked loudly because the door was left open.* (no comma) Here is your test: find the subordinating conjunction, then try reading the clause it introduces all by itself. If that group of words feels incomplete, it is the dependent clause. The remaining part — the one that can stand alone — is the independent clause. Remember: a dependent clause is not wrong — it just needs a partner to be a complete sentence.