Creating Simple and Compound Sentences
It's not uncommon to write first drafts quickly. You may want to get all your ideas down before you forget them, or you may be so enthusiastic about your topic that you just write and write without regard for good grammar. When you revise your work, check to see that each group of words beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period or other end mark of punctuation is truly a sentence—not two or more sentences miswritten as one.
Remember that a complete sentence may be either simple or compound. A simple sentence is a single clause with at least one subject and at least one predicate, or verb. However, the subject, the predicate, or both may be compound. The sentences below are all simple sentences, even though they have compound parts.
Compound Subject
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Apes and monkeys are primates.
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Compound Predicate
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Scientists observe and study wildlife.
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Compound Subject and Compound Predicate
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Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey observed and studied primates in the wild.
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A compound sentence contains two or more simple sentences joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, so, nor, yet, or for) or by a semicolon. The examples below show two different ways to punctuate a compound sentence.
Jane Goodall studied chimps, and Dian Fossey studied mountain gorillas.
Wild monkeys may live more than twenty years; gorillas may live more than forty.
A
run-on sentence is two or more sentences incorrectly written as one sentence. To correct a run-on, write it as separate sentences or form one complete sentence as shown in the examples below.
Run-on
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Monkeys beat their chests they swing from trees.
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Run-on
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Monkeys beat their chests, they swing from trees.
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Correct
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Monkeys beat their chests. They swing from trees.
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Correct
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Monkeys beat their chests, and they swing from trees.
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Correct
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Monkeys beat their chests; they swing from trees.
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