Clause Organization
A clause is a group of words that has a subject
and a predicate. Sentences can have one clause or many clauses.
You won’t often see a sentence with more than three clauses in the
SAT Writing section. You will see a good number of SAT items that
test clause organization.
The following sentence has three clauses, each
of which is underlined:
|
|
|
| | Bob Dylan stunned many of his fans | when | he appeared in a lingerie commercial in 2004 | |
| | Clause 1 | | Clause 2 | |
| because | much of his career had been devoted to debunking
empty commercialism. |
| | Clause
3 |
|
|
The words that are not underlined are the all-important
connections between the clauses. They guide the reader from clause
to clause, and the SAT will test your ability to choose these words
appropriately. Appropriate connections—technically known as conjunctions and connectives—require
that you follow logic, as well as grammar.
In the sentence above, when lets the
reader know that the trigger for Dylan’s fans’ surprise is coming.
Since when is a temporal word, it indicates that
something specific happened at some specific point in time, and
you’re about to be told what that was. Because indicates
that the reason why some of his fans were so stunned is about to
be revealed.
English has many such guide words and phrases. Individual
SAT tests will not include them all, but here’s a handy list of
some common ones:
| also |
consequently |
nevertheless |
still |
| although |
despite |
no less than |
therfore |
| and |
even |
or |
though |
| as well as |
for |
otherwise |
thus |
| because |
however |
since |
yet |
| but |
moreover |
so |
|
The Weak And
One commonly tested feature of clause organization could
be called “the weak and.” And is
pretty much the word-version of the + symbol and denotes addition
or the mere presence of two equivalent things at the same time or
in the same place:
Bill likes ketchup and John
likes mustard. |
“Big deal,” you say, but the and here
doesn’t serve as much of a guide word. The SAT tests whether you
can recognize this type of weak and. Look at this
sentence:
Bob Dylan’s appearance in a
lingerie commercial stunned many of his fans and much of his career
had been devoted to debunking empty commercialism. |
Huh? This sentence just cries out for causation. Substitute because for and to
make this sentence be all that it can be:
Bob Dylan’s appearance in a
lingerie commercial stunned many of his fans because much
of his career had been devoted to debunking empty commercialism. |
Commas, Semicolons, and Colons
A related and much-tested concept concerns commas, semicolons,
and colons. These punctuation marks act as connection-words:
they are shorthand for certain types of connections between clauses.
If a period is a “full stop,” and a comma is a “pause,”
then a semicolon is somewhere in between, but closer to a full stop.
Use it to separate two clauses that could stand alone as sentences:
To err is human; some of us
are more human than others are.
To err is human. Some of us are more human than
others are. |
Use a colon either to “announce” a list or to magnify
or exemplify what preceded the colon:
You forgot to pack three key
items: a flashlight, a first aid kit, and a pair of sunglasses.
Most of the troublemakers in my class are actually
gifted students: Kim, for example, consistently receives high scores
on aptitude tests. |
Like semicolons, colons can separate clauses that can
stand alone. However, a colon stresses that the clause after the
colon follows sequentially from the phrase that precedes the colon:
To err is human; some of us
are more human than others are.
To err is human: some of us are more human than
others are. |
The first sentence indicates that all people make mistakes,
but, as an almost statistical point, some of us tend to make more
mistakes than others do. The second sentence places more emphasis
on the fact that certain people make more mistakes than most do.
That vs. Which
Commas are the hardest of all punctuation marks to master.
Luckily the SAT tests a few key mistakes, such as the Montagues
and the Capulets of the pronoun world, that and which. Read
the following two sentences:
The car that I had repaired
is in the driveway.
The car, which I had to have repaired, is in the
driveway. |
The first sentence tells you which car is in the driveway: that
I had repaired is a modifier of the car.
It performs the same function that “red” or “blue” would if either
was substituted for that I had repaired. It’s a response
to the question, Where did you park the car you had repaired? The
second sentence reports the repair of the car as incidental. Which is used,
and the which-clause is set off with commas. It’s
a response to the question, Where is the car? If you see a which-clause,
make sure that commas set it off. Often the SAT will omit one of
the commas.
Comma Splice
Another commonly tested error is the comma splice.
Don’t use a comma where a period or semicolon is required:
To err is human, some of us
are more human than others are. |
This is a comma splice, pal, which is a type of fused
sentence, also known as a run-on sentence. Fix
them with a semicolon or period. The SAT loves this
concept!
Sentence Fragments
Watch out for sentence fragments too. A fragment occurs
when a poor, insecure, dependent clause that cannot stand on its
own is forced to do so. These clauses often contain gerunds (-ing constructions)
or infinitives:
Swelling to twice its size.
To reach your target score on the SAT. |
Fragments make you want to grab that poor lonely clause
by the collar and yell, “Where’s the payoff? Don’t leave me hanging!”
Resist the temptation. Understand that a happy sentence needs both
a subject and a predicate. Dependent clauses need a more self-sufficient
clause for support. Fragments show up quite a bit in Paragraph Improvement.
