I have to assume that there are at least a few people to whom this information is either new or unclear and without it, further explanations are meaningless. Even if you think you know this, please read because we'll revisit a lot of it later on.
First I'm going to talk to you about parts of a sentence, beginning with the thing that makes a sentence a sentence: the CLAUSE. No, not Santa, and I have no gifts for you other than my tainted wisdom.
WHAT IS A CLAUSE?
A clause is simply a group of words that contains a verb. Holy crap that was easy! If you need further clarification, a verb is the action word in your sentence: went, does, laughed, sighing, runs.
BUT you can't just drop a verb into a mashup of words and produce a sentence. The verb needs a partner, and that partner helps create a verb phrase.
A verb phrase is a verb plus the object that verb is interacting with.
Maggie went to the store.
Went is the verb, store is the object.
Now the tricky part: there's a difference between the object and the subject, and you need to iron that down in your head. The most basic definition is that the subject is the person or thing doing the verb, and the object is the person or thing the verb is being done to. In the example above, the subject is Maggie. Not every sentence has a subject and an object, but most do.
Now that you know what a clause is, how do you use it?
A sentence will always contain at least one clause, but a clause does not have to be a complete sentence. Clauses can be independent, which is to say they stand on their own and form a sentence, or dependent, meaning they are incomplete and rely on the rest of the sentence to give them meaning. Sometimes you'll hear these called main and subordinate clauses.
Clauses can be linked with conjunctions: and, but, or, etc.
Maggie went to the store and bought some milk.
Maggie went to the store is an independent clause, bought some milk is a dependent clause, and they're connected by the conjunction, and. They fit into one sentence because both clauses share the same subject, Maggie.
Clauses can also be linked by commas. This is where the knowledge above comes in super handy.
When you're linking an independent clause with a dependent clause, you do NOT use a comma to separate them, as in the example sentence above. I get this wrong all the time. However, when you are linking two independent clauses, whether or not you're bridging them with a conjunction, you use a comma, and the comma goes BEFORE the conjunction.
Maggie went to the store, and she bought some milk.
Placing the comma after the conjunction is a very common mistake, and it stands out like a punch in the face.
Make sense? Good! Because we have a long way to go.
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