Thursday, January 21, 2016

*SENTENCE COMBINATION*

Learning to combine ideas into more complex sentences is an important writing skill. There are many ways to do this. Try to combine the following three sentences. Do not use a semi-colon.

Sentence 1: The snow lay heavily on the ground.
Sentence 2: People were shoveling the driveways and sidewalks.
Sentence 3: There was little traffic on the roads until the plows had cleared the major routes.

2 comments:

Charlesbe12 said...

Since the snow laid heavily on the ground, there was little traffic on the roads until the plows had cleared the major routes, and people were shoveling the driveways and sidewalks.

Michael said...

Good try, Charlesbe12. But I don't see the logic of your last conjunction ("and"). Remember, the point of this exercise is not simply to join the sentences together, but to make a *meaningful* complex sentence.

In this case, a few coordinating conjunctions might suffice:

The snow lay heavily on the ground, and people were shoveling the driveways and sidewalks, but there was little traffic on the roads until the plows had cleared the major routes.

Otherwise, you might try to use a relative pronoun:

Although people were shoveling the snow, which lay heavily on the ground, from the driveways and sidewalks, there was little traffic on the roads until the plows had cleared the major routes.

Or you could even make the first sentence into a modifier:

Although people were shoveling the heavy snow from the driveways and sidewalks, there was little traffic on the roads until the plows had cleared the major routes.