English Flashcards
Simple sentence
One independent clause, may have compound elements.
Ex: judy and alan watered the lawn and pulled the weeds.
Compound sentence
Two or more independent clauses with no dependent clauses. Usually joined by comma and coordinating conjunction or ;
Ex: The time has come, and we are ready
Complex sentence
Has one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses
Ex: although he has the fly, harry went to work.
Marcia got married after she finished college.
Compound-Complex sentences
Has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause
Ex: john is my friend who went to India, and he brought souvenirs for us.
You may not know, but we heard the music that you played last night.
COMMAS (1-5)
• before coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses
•after introductory phrase or adverbial clause “After the final,…”
• b/w items in a series
• b/w coordinate adjs not joined with and “The kind, brown dog followed me home”
• interjections, after yes & no responses “Oh,…”
COMMAS (6-10)
•separate nonessential modifiers / appositives “Thomas Edison, an American inventor,…”
• set off nouns of direct addy, interrogative tags, and contrast “You, John, are my only hope.””This is the last time, correct?” “You’re my friend, not my enemy”
• dates, addresses, geographical names, titles
•for quotes, he/she said
Capitalization (1-3)
• first word of sentence/ of direct quotation
•proper nouns and adjs that come from proper nouns “I’m from Europe.” “My mother is Italian”
• days, months and holidays
Capitalization (4-6)
• directional names when they refer to areas, but not when they refer to direction
• all important words in a title
• kinship names only if uses as part or whole of a proper noun. Do not capitalize when using descriptively. “Uncle Mark is coming over.” “Did you ask Mom if you could eat a cookie?” “Sally’s uncle Jimbo is a chef.”
Second person
Written directly to the reader
Brackets
• when placing parentheses inside of parentheses
• when adding explanation or details that are not part of a quote
Hyphen
Compound words
•written out numbers 21-99
• fractions
Dashes
Used to show a break or change in thought
• to set off parenthetical statements or an appositive w/ internal punctuation
Ellipsis
To show when words have been removed from a quote. 4 dots if full sentence or more is removed
• should not be used at beginning or end of quote unless some words are deleted from the end of final sentence
Semicolon
Used to connect major sentence pieces of = value
• b/w closely connected independent clauses
• b/w independent clauses linked w/ a transitional word
• b/w items in a series that has internal punctuation
Colons
Used to call attention to the words that follow it; must come after independent clause
•after an independent clause to make a list
• for elaboration or to give a quote “There is one thing that stands out in your resume: responsibility.”
• after greeting in a formal letter, to show hours and minutes and to separate title and subtitle
