As we might already know, a sentence is a grammatical unit made up of one or more words. In addition, every sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop or punctuation mark. But what is a simple sentence?
A simple sentence in English is a sentence that’s made up of a single independent clause. In a simple sentence, there’s only one subject and often only one verb. In other words, a simple sentence is the most basic sentence that we could create!
What are ten simple sentence examples?
Now that we have a basic understanding let’s look at ten simple sentence examples. By looking at a few simple sentences in English, we’ll be able to learn what they look like and how we can identify them:
Hugh went to the shops.
Terry was late for the bus.
The car ran a red light.
I bought a new computer.
We went to the cinema.
Martha bought a new dog.
The bus was late.
We played football.
She often reads books.
They walked to the park.
As we can see from these simple sentence examples, each sentence comprises only a single independent clause. Moreover, we can also see that no dependent provisions are attached to the sentences.
How do you write a simple sentence?
By now, we’ve learned a bit about simple sentences and seen some simple sentence examples. But how can we write our simple sentences in English?
When writing a simple sentence, the key thing to remember is that it must be an independent clause that can stand on its own without other clauses to give it meaning. However, these can vary in length quite considerably. For instance:
Maurice swam.
I ate.
Even though these simple sentence examples are only two words long, they still count as simple sentences. This is because they contain both a subject and a predicate (or verb). However, we can also write longer, simple sentences such as this one:
Clara taught herself how to play the piano.
When we think of simple sentences in English, we might imagine they have to be very basic. However, longer sentences can still be simple sentences. This example sentence contains two verbs: ‘taught’ and ‘play.’ However, it includes a single subject and forms only one independent clause.
Here’s how this sentence might look if it were made up of more than one clause:
Clara wanted to play the piano, so she taught herself.
As we can see, this sentence doesn’t count as a simple sentence in English. This is because it’s made up of an independent clause, ‘Clara wanted to play the piano,’ followed by a subordinate clause which needs the main clause to give it context. A comma separates the two clauses.
What are the other sentence types
Now that we’ve seen some simple sentence examples and know how to write a simple sentence let’s take a quick look at the other main sentence types. These are:
Compound sentences: A sentence that’s made up of two independent clauses. In a compound sentence, these clauses are connected by a coordinating conjunction, such as ‘and’ or ‘but.’
Complex sentence: A complex sentence is a sentence that contains an independent clause and one or more subordinating (or dependent) clauses. These subordinating clauses rely on the independent clause to give meaning and context; thus, they can’t function as complete sentences.
Compound-complex: A compound-complex sentence is a little bit trickier to write. These consist of two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.
