hi guys it's time for nikki's unsolicited writing rambles again. this week's subject (heh) is the present participle!

a sentence has two major parts: a subject (the thing that is doing the action) and a verb (the action). generally speaking, when you have a new subject and verb, you have a new clause at least, or a even a new sentence.

what is a clause? a clause is a group of words with a subject and a predicate (all the action part of the sentence).

There are two types of clauses: independent clauses and dependent clauses. Independent clauses make sense on their own and can be their own sentence.

All clauses get separated by punctuation marks such as commas, semicolons and colons.

let's say we have three clauses:
"the woman goes to the store"
"she buys some cookies"
"the cookies taste delicious"

These clauses can all be in one sentence:

"The woman goes to the store; she buys some cookies; the cookies taste delicious."

This, however, sounds kind of strange, unless the purpose of the sentence is to create a sort of list like this.

Commas do not separate independent clauses unless there is an article in the middle.

"The woman goes to the store, AND she buys some cookies."

"The cookies taste delicious, BUT she gets a stomachache after she eats them."