Read the excerpt from a summary of "The World on Turtle's Back." [1] The twins had opposite natures: the right-handed twin was truthful, and the left-handed twin was deceitful. [2] The right-handed twin always did the right thing, and the left-handed twin always did everything backward. [3] In these ways, the brothers represented the two warring natures that are in all people. [4] Quarreling constantly, they used magical powers to create animals that fought one another, and to create plants and medicines that could be used for good or for evil. Which best describes sentence 2?

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Read the excerpt from a summary of “The World on Turtle’s Back.” [1] The twins had opposite natures: the right-handed twin was truthful, and the left-handed twin was deceitful. [2] The right-handed twin always did the right thing, and the left-handed twin always did everything backward. [3] In these ways, the brothers represented the two warring natures that are in all people. [4] Quarreling constantly, they used magical powers to create animals that fought one another, and to create plants and medicines that could be used for good or for evil.

Which best describes sentence 2?

A. It is a run-on sentence.

B. It is a simple sentence.

C. It is a compound-complex sentence.

D. It is a compound sentence.

The option that best describes sentence 2 is:

D. It is a compound sentence.

Explanation:

An independent clause is a group of words that has a subject and a predicate and that is able to express a complete thought on its own.

When we join two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction, we have a compound sentence. Coordinating conjunctions are the following: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

That is what we have in sentence 2, "The right-handed twin always did the right thing, and the left-handed twin always did everything backward." The coordinating conjunction "and" is connecting the two independent clauses. If we separate them, we can see they are independent because they can each express a full thought:

- The right-handed twin always did the right thing.

- And the left-handed twin always did everything backward.

Note: We would have a run-on sentence if sentence 2 did not have a comma before the conjunction.