compound sentences

compound sentence

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1. Grammar & Rhetoric Glossary
2. > Cacography - Cut Spelling

A compound sentence from the movie Braveheart (1995)

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Definition:

A sentence that contains at least two independent clauses.

Compound sentences can be formed in three ways:
(1) using coordinating conjunctions;
(2) using the semicolon, either with or without conjunctive adverbs;
(3) on occasion, using the colon.

The compound sentence is one of the four basic sentence structures. The other structures are the simple sentence, the complex sentence, and the compound-complex sentence.

See also:

• Exercise in Identifying Sentences by Structure
• Balanced Sentence
• Basic Sentence Structures
• Coordinating Words, Phrases, and Clauses
• Parataxis
• Sentence Variety in Gilbert Highet's "Diogenes"

Examples:

• "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
  (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)

• "The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended."
  (Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968)

• "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
  (John F. Kennedy)

• "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one."
  (attributed to both Lyndon B. Johnson and Sam Rayburn)

• "Tell the truth, work hard, and come to dinner on time."
  (Gerald R. Ford)

• "I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming."
  (attributed to Jimmy Carter, among others)

• "Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them."
  (Ronald Reagan)

• "I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them."
  (George H. W. Bush)

• "You can put wings on a pig, but you don't make it an eagle."
  (Bill Clinton)

• "The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free."
  (George W. Bush)

• "Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference."
  (Barack Obama)

• "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't go to yours."
  (Yogi Berra)

• "Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts."
  (Aldous Huxley)

• "Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing."
  (Oscar Wilde)

• "The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
  The desert sighs in the bed,
  And the crack in the teacup opens
  A lane to the land of the dead."
  (W. H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening")

• "I used to be snow white, but I drifted."
  (Mae West)

• "It was dawn outside, a glowing gray, and birds had plenty to say out in the bare trees; and at the big window was a face and a windmill of arms."
  (David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996)