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ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?
Phrases, Clauses, and Sentences 7416 Views
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Transcript
- 00:00
Phrases, Clauses and Sentences, Oh my! a la Shmoop.
- 00:12
Before everyone started speaking in fragments...
- 00:15
...and before all communication consisted entirely of acronyms and abbreviations...
- 00:22
...there used to be these things called "sentences."
- 00:25
As a bit of a history lesson...
Full Transcript
- 00:27
...as well as something to help you compose an essay that won't make your teacher's stomach
- 00:32
turn...
- 00:32
...let's examine a sentence, and see what makes it tick.
- 00:37
As you may already be aware, a sentence has both a subject and a verb.
- 00:41
It also has things like a capital letter at the beginning and some form of punctuation
- 00:45
at the end.
- 00:46
A foreign concept, we know. But those are just the basics. To make a sentence
- 00:51
really zing, pop, and wow...
- 00:53
...you'll want to experiment with phrasing.
- 00:55
Otherwise, your sentence is just going to lie there, like a dead fish.
- 00:59
It's going to stink like one, too. So... what exactly is a phrase, and how do
- 01:04
we use it to make our sentence awesome.
- 01:06
A phrase is really just a series of words you add to an otherwise boring sentence to
- 01:11
add description, explanation, context or color.
- 01:17
Phrases are needy... they can't exist on their own. They need to be part of a sentence in
- 01:21
order to survive. Total parasites.
- 01:24
A phrase can also have a subject or a verb, but not both. It you're reading something
- 01:29
with both, it's more likely a sentence.
- 01:33
So, take a sentence like "The cat ran." Whoop-dee-do.
- 01:37
If we add a phrase, we can turn it into "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran."
- 01:45
Still not a thrilling story, but at least we can clearly visualize this freakish animal.
- 01:50
"The cat with the extraordinarily long tail" is what's called a "noun phrase," because
- 01:56
it contains a noun.
- 01:58
The noun being "cat." Yeah, "tail" is a noun, too, but the cat is the subject here. Because
- 02:05
without the cat, we'd just have a tail, floating in space.
- 02:09
Which would really drive the neighbor's dog cray-cray.
- 02:11
Well, if there's a noun phrase, there must also be a "verb phrase," right?
- 02:15
You're so smart.
- 02:16
If we turn our original sentence into "The cat ran through the courtyard singing show
- 02:21
tunes"...
- 02:22
...we've once again made our sentence more interesting...
- 02:25
...except this time we're focusing on an action rather than on the physical description of
- 02:30
a noun.
- 02:30
So here, our verb phrase is "ran through the courtyard singing show tunes."
- 02:37
We're guessing... something from Cats. Now, what if we do something totally nutso...
- 02:46
...and combine our noun phrase with our verb phrase?
- 02:49
We get, "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran through the courtyard singing
- 02:55
show tunes."
- 02:56
Now that is one cat we'd like to get to know a little better.
- 02:59
However, there's one more tool we can use to make our sentence even more baller... a
- 03:05
"clause."
- 03:06
Put those away, cat. Other kind of "claws."
- 03:09
A clause actually can contain both a subject and a verb...
- 03:12
...but what makes it stand out is that it tells the reader a little something more about
- 03:17
the subject than a basic, skin 'n bones sentence.
- 03:20
We could say, "The cat ran, but he didn't make it to the bus on time."
- 03:24
We don't have that detailed description of his tail, and we don't know if he was singing
- 03:28
anything as he ran...
- 03:30
...but it's certainly more informative than "The cat ran."
- 03:33
We know what you're wondering. "Can we put together all three of these phrases, to make
- 03:38
the most incredible sentence of all time?
- 03:40
You betcha. "The cat with the extraordinarily long tail ran through the courtyard singing
- 03:46
show tunes, but he didn't make it to the bus on time."
- 03:50
Not only is this sentence insanely interesting, but it also contains a moral:
- 03:54
Save your singing for the shower, unless you want to be late for cat school
- 03:58
Having a knowledge of phrases and clauses in your back pocket will help you class up
- 04:02
your sentences...
- 04:04
...it will make your work more fun to read and, quite honestly, more fun to write, too.
- 04:10
Just don't have too much fun. You don't want your teacher to catch you enjoying yourself.
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