You are asked to write an essay about why so many residents failed to evacuate from a wildfire before their neighborhood began to burn, using a newspaper article as one of your sources.
Which part of the article would provide the best support for your thesis that the city's outdated landline
warning system was to blame?

A. The transcript of the city manager's press conference describing when telephone warnings were
issued

B. A description of the psychology of the fight or flight response from a medical study of recent
deadly disasters

C. Quotes from angry residents claiming they were not warned

D. A map showing which households did/did not have landlines and which did/did not evacuate in
time

i don't think it's a good idea to threaten anyone at all.

sentences vary by structure as well as by function. there are compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

simple sentence

i like to read.

a simple sentence has one independent clause.

compound sentence

i like to read, and i also like to write.

a compound sentence includes more than one independent clause, connected by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, or yet).

complex sentence

i prefer to read books that are bestsellers.

a complex sentence includes one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. (a dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone.) types of dependent clauses include relative clauses (i kicked the boy who pinched me), adverb clauses (i am going home now because i have a curfew), and noun clauses (i don't know what to do next).

compound-complex sentence

although i prefer to read current bestsellers, i do like to read old agatha christie mysteries, and i also like some 20th-century science fiction.

compound-complex sentences take a bunch of clauses (multiple independent clauses, and one or more dependent clauses) and toss them together like a salad. although these sentences take practice to write in a grammatically correct fashion, they can hold a tremendous amount of meaning, and are common in academic writing.