dependent clauses create fragments. An independent clause is basically a complete sentence; it can stand on its own. It consists of a subject (e.g. “The dog”) and a predicate (e.g. “barked”). Ex: The ...

I argued that they don’t, explaining that the sequence-of-tenses rule doesn’t come into play at allin such complex sentences where the dependent clause functions as the subject of the sentence.

For example, "The duck that attacked me scared ... Adverbs that don't end in "ly," such as "when" or "while," usually introduce a dependent clause, which rule number two in this post already ...