Joining two or more subjects

The subjects of two simple sentences can be joined to make one simple sentence with conjunctions like and but both and either or neither nor and not only but also Note the agreement between subject and verb in the following [compare > 5.31]

The boss is flying to Paris His secretary is flying to Paris The boss and his secretary are flying to Pans Both the boss and his secretary are flying to Pans

The boss is flying to Rome His secretary is not flying to Rome The boss but not his secretary is flying to Rome

The boss may be flying to Berlin His secretary may be flying to Berlin (One of the two may be flying there) Either the boss or his secretary is flying to Berlin

The boss isn't flying to York His secretary isn't flying to York Neither the boss nor his secretary is flying to York

1 The sentence

Joining two or more objects, complements or verbs

The objects of two simple sentences may be joined to make one simple sentence with conjunctions such as and, both and:

I met Jane I met her husband

I met Jane and her husband

I met both Jane and her husband

I didn't meet Jane I didn t meet her husband I didn t meet either Jane or her husband I met neither Jane nor her husband

Adjective complements can be joined in the same way: It was cold It was wet It was cold and wet It wasn't cold It wasn't wet It wasn't cold or wet It was neither cold nor wet

Two or more finite verbs can be joined to make a simple sentence: We sang all night We danced all night We sang and danced all night

The compound sentence

The compound sentence

We often need to join ideas. One way we can do this is to link simple sentences to form compound sentences. This linking is achieved by any of the following:

- a semi-colon: We fished all day, we didn t catch a thing

- a semi-colon, followed by a connecting adverb [> App 18]: We fished all day, however, we didn't catch a thing

- a co-ordinating conjunction (e.g. and, but, so yet) often preceded by a comma: We fished all day but (we) didn t catch a thing

In a compound sentence, there is no single main clause with subordinate clauses depending on it [> 1.21]: all the clauses are of equal importance and can stand on their own, though of course they follow a logical order as required by the context. We often refer to clauses in a compound sentence as co-ordinate main clauses.