Loose, Periodic and Mixed Sentences

Types of Sentences

Background Knowledge - IMPORTANT 

A dependent clause can be seen by a dependent marker word - such as when. 

When the boy went to school...

An independent clause is a complete thought by itself and can remain in a sentence, alone. We can think of the independent clause as the main idea of a sentence.

He saw his team playing the football game.



Periodic Sentence

The dependent clause comes first and then the independent.

When the boy went to school, he saw his team playing the football game.


Loose Sentence

The independent clause comes first and then the dependent follows.

He saw his team playing the football game when he went to school.


Mixed Sentence

This is where the independent clause (main idea) is in the middle of the sentence.

When Pogba's strike hit the net, Manchester United had won the game and the Champion's League title.

In this sentence the main idea is that Manchester United had won the game. The rest of the sentence is additional information.