Glossary
clause
A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb; an independent clause can stand as a sentence, a dependent one cannot.
A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb working together, and it is the unit that grammar questions are really counting. An independent clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence: the nurse checked the pump. A dependent clause has a subject and a verb too, but a word in front of it — a subordinating conjunction such as because, although, when, or a relative pronoun such as which — leaves the thought unfinished: because the nurse checked the pump. That piece cannot stand alone, and punctuating it as a sentence produces a fragment. Counting clauses is how you diagnose the three sentence errors: one independent clause is a sentence, two joined by nothing but a comma is a comma splice, two joined by nothing at all is a run-on, and a dependent clause on its own is a fragment. Phrases, by contrast, have no subject-verb pair at all.
Taught in
Related terms
- independent clause — An independent clause has its own subject and a finite verb and can stand alone as a sentence; a dependent clause has the same parts and still cannot.
- dependent clause — A dependent clause has a subject and a verb but opens with a word that leaves it unfinished, so it cannot stand alone as a sentence.
- phrase — A phrase is a group of related words that works as one part of speech and has no subject-verb pair of its own.
- sentence fragment — A sentence fragment is a group of words punctuated as a sentence that lacks a subject, a verb or a complete thought.
- run-on sentence — A run-on sentence joins two independent clauses with no punctuation at all, while a comma splice joins them with only a comma.
- parallel structure — Parallel structure puts items in a list or a comparison in the same grammatical shape — all nouns, all verbs, or all clauses — so the reader can see the pattern.
- subject-verb agreement — Subject-verb agreement means the verb matches its subject in number — a singular subject takes a singular verb, a plural subject a plural verb.
- pronoun case — Pronoun case is the form a pronoun takes for the job it does — subject (I, he, she), object (me, him, her) or possessive (my, his, her).
- verb tense — Verb tense is the form of a verb that places an action in time — past, present or future — and shows whether it is ongoing or finished.
- modifier — A modifier is a word or phrase that describes another word, and it belongs as close as possible to the word it describes.
- semicolon — A semicolon joins two independent clauses without a conjunction, and separates list items that already contain commas.
- part of speech — A part of speech is the job a word is doing in a particular sentence — noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction or interjection — not a label the word carries with it.
- direct object — A direct object is the noun or pronoun that receives an action verb — the answer to "what?" or "whom?" after the verb.
Source: The grammar guide in this course, whose conventions follow the US Government Publishing Office's Style Manual for standard written American English, with standard grammar references for agreement, case, tense and sentence structure. The GPO manual is US federal government material, not subject to copyright in the United States. Every definition and example above was written for this course; no reference text is reproduced. (GPO Style Manual accessed 2026-10-27; definitions written 2026-10-27)