Sentence & Structure

Assumes you have done Building a Sentence From Its Parts, which ended on the three parts of a single sentence. This track goes one level up, to the unit sentences are actually built from. It opens on the clause, because most punctuation rules are stated in terms of clauses and are therefore unlearnable until you can see one — and the test for whether a clause can stand alone takes a second to apply out loud. The second part uses that test on the most common serious punctuation error in English, joining two complete clauses with only a comma, and shows that the two correct repairs are not interchangeable: one keeps both ideas equal, the other decides which idea is the point. The third part names what you have built, and the names turn out to be nothing more than a count of clauses and a note of whether one was demoted.