So far we have looked at how phrases and words build up into sentences. But there is one further level of grammar you have to understand before you can really grasp how sentences work clauses.
Clauses normally contain a verb, and most contain one or more other components. They follow a number of patterns, and we have already looked at one:
But, you could well object, just now that was described as a
SUBJECT VERB OBJECT
Mary writes books
sentence. How can it be a sentence and a clause at the same time? The reason is that we can have different kinds of sentence. Some consist of just one clause, like Mary writes books, and others consist of several clauses:
CLAUSE CLAUSE CLAUSE
Mary writes books.
Mary writes books and loves reading them too.
Although Mary writes books she has not been very successful and is looking for another
Career.
There are two ways of telling whether a group of words is a clause or not:
 it should contain a full verb:
Although Mary writes books
She has not been very successful
And is looking for another career
 it should follow one of a number of standard patterns, like SUBJECT+VERB+OBJECT.
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