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Clauses and phrases are the building blocks of sentences. Every sentence must have at least one clause to be considered grammatically correct. Understanding how clauses and phrases work will help you better understand sentence structure. You’ll need to have a working knowledge of subjects, predicates, and objectsbefore you continue.
Clauses
A clause is a subject and a predicate working together.
Examples
I took the dog to the park.
The example has one subject, I, and one predicate, took. Since they are working together to form a comprehensible sentence, this sentence has one clause.
I love learning, so I spend a lot of time reading.
This example has two predicates: love and spend. Since they are each working together with separate subjects, this sentence has two clauses.
Phrases
A phrase is a group of words related to the subject, predicate, or object. Phrases do not contain a subject and a predicate, or we would call them clauses. Phrases provide additional information about subjects, predicates, and / or objects, and understanding how they work is helpful to building an analyzing sentences.
Examples
After working late into the night, Jack fell asleep on his desk.
The emboldened portion of the sentence exemplifies the phrase. It provides additional information about our subject, Jack, but the sentence does not require this information to be grammatically complete.
I left my keys inside of the Whole Foods, my favorite grocery store.
In this example sentence, the predicate is left and the subject is I. On the other side of the sentence we have a phrase that provides additional information about the object of the sentence Whole Foods. Note that a phrase can come at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.
Phrases
A phrase is a small group of words that forms a meaningful unit
