The Mastering the Mechanics webinar series also describes required sentence elements and varying sentence types. Please see these archived webinars for more information.
Key: Yellow, bold = subject; green underline = verb, blue, italics = object, pink, regular font = prepositional phrase
Independent clause: An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence. It contains a subject and a verb and is a complete idea.
- I like spaghetti.
- He reads many books.
Dependent clause: A dependent clause is not a complete sentence. It must be attached to an independent clause to become complete. This is also known as a subordinate clause.
- Although I like spaghetti,…
- Because he reads many books,…
Subject: A person, animal, place, thing, or concept that does an action. Determine the subject in a sentence by asking the question “Who or what?”
- I like spaghetti.
- He reads many books.
Verb: Expresses what the person, animal, place, thing, or concept does. Determine the verb in a sentence by asking the question “What was the action or what happened?”
- I like spaghetti.
- He reads many books.
- The movie is good. (The be verb is also sometimes referred to as a copula or a linking verb. It links the subject, in this case "the movie," to the complement or the predicate of the sentence, in this case, "good.")
Object: A person, animal, place, thing, or concept that receives the action. Determine the object in a sentence by asking the question “The subject did what?” or “To whom?/For whom?”
- I like spaghetti.
- He reads many books.
Prepositional Phrase: A phrase that begins with a preposition (i.e., in, at for, behind, until, after, of, during) and modifies a word in the sentence. A prepositional phrase answers one of many questions. Here are a few examples: “Where? When? In what way?”
- I like spaghetti for dinner.
- He reads many books in the library.
