Question 1

A simple sentence consists of one _________________.

— Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors (1998)

Question 2

Which of these samples from the judicial writing of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is not a simple sentence?

Question 3

A compound sentence consists of _______________.

— Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors (1998)

Question 4

Which of these samples from the academic writing of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is a compound sentence?

”Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.” — “Early Forms of Liability” (1909)

“But as precedents survive like the clavicle in the cat, long after the use they once served is at an end, and the reason for them has been forgotten, the result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical point of view.” — “Common Carriers and the Common Law” (1879)

“The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.” — The Common Law (1881)

“If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience.” — “The Path of the Law” (1897)

Question 5

A complex sentence consists of ___________.

— Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors (1998)

Question 6

Which of these samples from a mix of the judicial and academic writing of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is a complex sentence?

Mark all that apply.

“While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.” — Abrams v. United States (1919)

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” — Buck v. Bell (1927)

“Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view." — “Natural Law” (1918)

"State interference is an evil, where it cannot be shown to be a good." —"The Common Law" (1881)

Question 7

Based on the questions you have answered so far, write what you think might be the definition of a “compound-complex sentence.”