Subordinating Ideas and Clauses

Subordination shows a variety of subtle relationships between ideas.

By placing ideas in dependent clauses, phrases, or modifying words you can show how they are related to the main idea of a sentence. Consider the following sentence:

A house stood on a hill, and the house was white, and the hill was north of town, and the house was solitary.

This sentence sounds childish because all ideas are coordinated in independent clauses. Beginning writers often string many independent clauses together in one long compound sentence. The following revision correctly subordinates two ideas by placing them in minor structures.

A solitary white house stood on a hill north of town.

Subordinate clauses are very effective structures for making relationships between ideas clear. Consider the following sentences:

The day was sunny and warm, but I decided to stay inside and worked on my paper.
Although the day was sunny and warm, I decided to stay inside and worked on my paper.

In the first sentence, coordination gives equal weight to the temptation of the sunny day and the decision to work. In the second sentence, subordination of the temptation gives greater weight to the decision to stay inside. The subordinating word, although, makes the nature of the temptation clearer than the simple coordinating conjunction but does.

Which of the following sentences expresses relationships among ideas more clearly? Two cars waited at the light, and one was red, and the other was black, and their engines raced. A red car and a black car waited at the light, their engines racing.