Sentences are like the members of a sports team: they serve different purposes. Depending on what you want to convey to your readers, choose among the following sentence types to offer a single idea, to give equal weight to two ideas, or to emphasize one idea over another. To discuss the different types of sentences and the purposes they serve, we’ll need some terminology that may be unfamiliar — like main clause and subordinate clause. Although it isn’t necessary to understand this terminology fully to write good sentences, any more than it’s necessary to know specialized terms like blitz and sack to play a game of touch football, the terms are useful if you want to discuss and understand writing in any depth.