Writing Exercise Nine
(Relative Clauses)
Write your story with the addition of relative clauses in appropriate places in your sentences.
A relative clause (also called an adjective clause) is a subordinate clause that acts as an adjective — beginning with who (whom, whose), which, that, where.
EX: John, who believes he can't write well, will be surprised by how well he does in this class.
Relative clauses are often used to link together two sentences that are closely related but that in our initial writing we kept separated.
EX: History books often ignore the debt the Puritans owed to Native Americans. These books should not be used in our schools.
We can change this to: History books which ignore the debt the Puritans owed to Native Americans should not be used in our schools.
Remember, any noun in your sentence can have its meaning expanded through the addition of a relative clause.
Punctuating relative clauses:
Relative clauses can be either restrictive or non- restrictive; non-restrictive clauses are set off by commas.
EX: Only the ball players who are wearing the yellow shirts are the winners.(This means that it is only the players wearing yellow who are winners. The relative clause restricts the meaning to just this noun, hence the term restrictive clause.)
Only the ball players, who are wearing the yellow shirts, are the winners.(This means that it is only incidentally important that the winners happen to be wearing yellow. Of all the players, it is the ball players who are the winners.
Since the meaning is not restrictive, the clause is set off with commas it indicates that it is not essential.
Meta-Narrative Nine: Write a
paragraph that describes one instance of the decision you made about inserting
a relative clause.
Is it a restrictive or non-restrictive clause? |
Go to Exercise Ten
Go to Relative Clause Examples by Edwin Way Teale
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