Examples of Compound Complex Sentences

Compound complex sentences help the flow of what you are writing and keep the reader’s interest better than simpler sentences. These types of sentences are helpful in both business writing and creative writing. A good class to learn more about writing is “Quality Paragraph and Essay Writing.” If you want to learn how to make your writing better and hold your reader’s attention then I recommend that that you take a good course in writing. Once you have the basics down, you’ll find your writing has vastly improved.

The Parts of the Compound Complex Sentence

The compound complex sentence consists of three parts. There is the compound part which means that two simple sentences are joined together by and or a comma. And the third part is the interrupter or the phrase that is dependent on one of the other parts of the sentence. This type of sentence is used to give more interest to the writing and to tell more in one sentence.

When you have a lot of simple, short sentences then the writing seems to be choppy and cut up.  By creating a variety of compound sentences, the writing seems to flow better. The person reading your writing has an easier time following what you have written. 

Examples of Compound Complex Sentences

Here are some examples of compound complex sentences and other sentences so that you can compare them and see the differences.

Simple Sentence Examples:

• The cat is outside.
• Can Johnny come out to play?
• There are many online courses available at Udemy.

Compound Sentences:

• I love English classes and I’ll be enrolling at Udemy later this week.
• There are a lot of books on that shelf and I am going to find one that I like.
• That airplane has been missing for a long time now and nobody knows what happened to it.

Examples of Compound Complex Sentences:

• The bird was sitting on his perch and he was happily eating his food, but then he fell.
• The car was stuck in the mud for a long time, much to my dismay, and the rain just kept falling.
• The store carries lots of grocery types of items and it has other services because it is the only store in the small town.

Take a Sentence Test

There is a blog that has grammar tests and you can take this little test to see if you can spot the compound complex sentence. The blog isn’t on just that type of sentence, it has all kinds of grammar quizzes. It is worth wandering through the website if you are interested in improving your writing skills.

When to Use Compound Complex Sentences

When you are writing and using compound sentences regularly in your stories or articles, the compound complex sentences just seem to happen naturally.  It enables you to define what you are saying a little better or interject a little bit of interesting information into the sentence.

It doesn’t really matter if you are writing something for business or writing a novel.  Both of these types of writing will benefit from longer sentences to hold the reader’s attention. A lot of short sentences are a clear sign that the writer isn’t very educated or English is not their first language. It is also a sign that the bit of writing was not written by a person at all.  There is software called an article spinner that will rewrite sentences. Generally the article spinner can spit out a lot of short sentences and it is hard to read. I suppose most people would read it and say the article was boring because it could not hold their attention. But it is the short sentences that are the problem.

If you are trying to improve your writing for business, I recommend the class called “Business Writing.” It is an online class for improving the writing skills of business professionals.  Your writing skills as a business person can make or break your career. If you write an email to your client that appears to be written by a fifth grade student, it isn’t going to instill confidence in what you have to offer. You absolutely need to know how to write emails, letters and other documents that communicate effectively and efficiently to make your point.

When writing something for entertainment, like a novel, the compound complex sentence becomes a tool that you will use often.  As you get into the writing groove, you will let the words just flow. This type of sentence is more like how we speak.  We don’t speak in short, choppy sentences. We say a lot in one breath and tend to combine sentences in order to hold the attention of the person we’re speaking with. With novel writing you will do the same thing by using the compound complex sentence.

Writing novels take a special skill set. They are not short stories and there is more involved to keep that story on track. There is a good class called “Novel Writing Workshop” that is an online novel writing class. It will teach you the skills you need to get your novel written and published.

Improving Your Writing

You can greatly improve your writing by using compound complex sentences when you write. It doesn’t matter if you are doing business writing or writing a novel. By using these unique sentences, you will write more like you speak and be able to hold the reader’s attention better. If you are looking to learn more about writing and are thinking of publishing your work, check out this online class for writing for publication or this novel writing workshop.