Implied Subjects (2)

• Rosie went to the store, and she bought a carton of milk.

What is the subject of the second clause? Rosie, of course. ("She" is a pronoun that substitutes for Rosie). This is a "normal" compound sentence.

Now consider this sentence:

• Calvin ate a sandwich and drank a soda.

What is the subject of the second clause? (In other words, who drank the soda?) The answer is Calvin, of course. It's just that in this case, the subject (Calvin) is implied.

• Calvin ate a sandwich and [he] drank a soda.

If we had wanted to, we could have explicitly restated the subject (by either repeating Calvin's name or using a pronoun that refers to Calvin):

• Calvin ate a sandwich, and Calvin drank a soda.
• Calvin ate a sandwich, and he drank a soda.

But the reader gets it. We don't have to restate the subject.

These examples illustrate the rule that we learned in a previous lesson:

In a compound sentence, if the subject of the second clause is the same as the subject of the first clause, you can omit the explicit restatement of the subject. In such cases, we say that the subject of the second clause is implied.

 

Instructions for the Quiz

For each sentence, determine if the subject of the second clause is explicitly stated or implied.

Quiz