Clauses are the large building blocks of sentences. An individual clause is a group of words that contains, at least, a subject and a verb that operate together (e.g., “she knows,” “he left”). Clauses can be very short (e.g, “I fell,” “I forgot”) or quite long (e.g., “I completely forgot about the surprise party last Saturday night for Alex’s birthday.”) Some sentences contain only one clause, while other sentences contain two or more clauses that are linked together with words like “because,” “so,” “and,” “but,” “when,” “while,” “that,” and “if.”
A clause always contains a subject and a verb that operate together, but other words can be part of the clause too. In the first example below, the words “late for the meeting” are part of the clause. The entire sentence “The lawyer was late for the meeting” is a clause.
| SUBJECT | VERB | |
| The lawyer | was | late for the meeting. |
| SUBJECT 1 | VERB 1 | SUBJECT 2 | VERB 2 | ||
| The lawyer | was | late for the meeting | because | the elevator | jammed. |
The second example above is a sentence with two clauses. The first is “The lawyer was late for the meeting,” and the second is “the elevator jammed.” The word “because” is a word that links the two clauses together. A word that functions in this way is called a CONJUNCTION. It is not part of either of the clauses.