Grammar 4: Writing Compound Sentences
Exercise A. Join each pair of simple sentences (independent clauses) together and create a compound sentence.
1. I can pull your tooth. I can try to save it.
2. You must help me. I will fail this test miserably.
3. I voted for Greg Allen. Greg lost the election.
4. The girls wore old clothes. The boys were all dressed up.
5. Ben wanted to come. He has to work today.
6. The dog crawled under our porch. That night she had ten puppies.
7. Lori was in a car accident. She is all right now.
8. We lived three years. We were very happy.
9. I mailed the letter to the college admissions office. It never got there.
10. Aunt Therese had three husbands. Aunt Shirley never married.
Exercise B. Revise each sentence below by crossing out and then insert a better coordinating conjunction in its place. Next, fill in the blank after each sentence with the word(s) which describe the relationship of the two independent clauses.
1. The heavy rain made advance impossible, and a thousand U.S. infantrymen were bogged down in a small, French village.
(ideas___________________________________________)
2. Helen Parviance and Margaret Sheldon, two Salvation Army ladies, could endure the soldiers’ depression, and they could do something about it.
(ideas___________________________________________)
3. Naturally, the ladies had no cookie cutter with them and they used a tin can to cut round pieces from the dough.
(ideas___________________________________________)
4. The circles of dough were fired on a makeshift, brick stove open to rain and wind, and even these crude doughnuts helped the men forget the rain and their homesickness.
(ideas___________________________________________)
5. The original circles of fried dough had soggy middles, and experiments proved the soggy middles could be eliminated by cutting a hole.
(ideas___________________________________________)
6. These early doughnuts were called “doughboys” and soon WWI infantrymen who ate them became known as “doughboys.”
(ideas___________________________________________)
7. No one seems to know how the word “doughboys” became “doughnuts,” and perhaps it had something to do with how “nuts” the soldiers were about these circles of dough.
(ideas____________________________________________)
8. The simple WWI doughnut has come a long way, and today stores which sell nothing but doughnuts can be found in most American cities.
(ideas____________________________________________)