Study Curve

Just to clarify, Belle Ringer is spot on with the definition and gives a good explanation.

However, the example provided "After a fun night of trick-or-treating, the kids were exhausted." does not include a subordinate clause.

A clause needs a subject and a verb, so the independent clause is "the kids were exhausted." but the other portion of the sentence "After a fun night of trick-or-treating" has no verb, so it can't be a clause.

If we just make a quick change "After they had a fun night of trick-or-treating" it has a subject and a verb and is a subordinate clause.

Mainly, when you're writing, you use subordinate clauses so you don't have lots of short sentences in a row:

They had a fun night of trick-or-treating. The kids were tired.

This (especially in a long paragraph) will start to sound very choppy. So you combine two related sentences:

After they had a fun night of trick-or-treating, the kids were tired.

In addition to your other answer that you received, I always revert to the "connectors" of "and, if, so, but, yet" for my coordinate clauses.

A subordinate clause is also called a dependent clause because it can not stand on its own and needs more information. When you read the clause you have questions and want/need more information. The clauses are connected by a coordinating conjunction. Some examples of these conjunctions would be words like, after, until, like, through and if. These however these are not the only words that will work.

An example would be:

After a fun night of trick-or-treating, the kids were exhausted

"After a fun night of trick-or-treating" can not stand on it's own and requires more informtion

Coordinate clauses are clauses that are strung together, but one is no more important than the other. These clauses are connected by coordinating conjunctions.

For example:

Mike likes pizza, but Mark prefers hamburgers.