Writing complex sentences requires students to take two complete ideas and subordinate one to the other based on the logical relationship between them. When students begin writing sentences that include multiple clauses, they need to be aware of the various ways to properly connect logically related ideas. For example, students should be able to recognize comma splices (e.g., “The team worked hard in practice, they won the tournament”). Students can often correct a comma splice by adding a subordinating conjunction to the beginning of the sentence (“Because the team worked hard in practice, they won the tournament”). This eliminates the comma splice and reinforces the relationship between the ideas. Students should also be mindful that a subordinate clause cannot stand on its own without creating a sentence fragment. “Because the team worked hard in practice” is not a complete thought.

Students will write sentences that have two ideas (clauses) joined by a subordinating conjunction, making one idea dependent on the other. Students should understand that in complex sentences, the dependent clause (the idea that contains the subordinating conjunction) can come before or after the independent clause. For example, “Because the forecast called for rain, I packed an umbrella” and “I packed an umbrella because the forecast called for rain” are both acceptable ways to write this complex sentence.

a sentence with an independent clause and at least one dependent clause (e.g., “I cleaned the room when the guests left.”)

During the editing stage of the writing process, students further improve their drafts and often prepare them for publication by correcting errors in mechanics, grammar, and spelling. Applying standard rules of the English language correctly helps the audience understand the information more easily by not having to interrupt their thinking to decide what the writer intended to say.

an incorrect sentence structure that occurs when a sentence is incomplete because it is missing a subject or predicate (e.g., Some dogs in my house)

a grammatically incorrect sentence structure that occurs when two or more independent clauses are joined without any punctuation (e.g., “They went to the store we needed milk.”)

a grammatically incorrect sentence structure that occurs when a comma alone and without a conjunction is used to join two independent clauses (e.g., “The class is going to the museum, I plan to join them.”); commonly referred to as a “comma splice”

standard rules of the English language, including written mechanics such as punctuation, capitalization, spelling, paragraphing, etc. and written/oral grammar such as parts of speech, word order, subject-verb agreement, and sentence structure

the grammatical state of a sentence when the subject and verb match in number (singular or plural) and/or person (first person, second person, or third person)