What if my answers are correct?
If you find that all your answers match these, then the skills or processes you use when coordinating words, phrases, and clauses are satisfactory.  Congratulations!

What if my answers to the sentence building exercises are incorrect?
If you find that some of your answers don't match these exactly, do not worry.  There are many ways to do these sentence combining exercises, some better than others.  Re-read the six qualities listed on p. 223: meaning, clarity, coherence, emphasis, conciseness, and rhythm.  If your sentences are different from the sentences below, check to see how your versions measure up to the qualities on p. 223.  As you look at your own answers, ask yourself the questions that you find with those six qualities.

Answers to Sentence Building Exercise on p. 233
Answers will vary.

1. The dancer was neither tall nor slender, but she was very, very elegant.
2. The winds dispersed, the rains slackened to a drizzle and a mist, the clouds fell apart, and the sun shone through.
3. The pickpocket moved quickly through the crowd, paused beside a policeman, stole his wallet, and then quietly slipped away.
4. The waitress tugged the pencil out of her lacquered hair, licked her pencil point, flicked over her bill pad, and asked if she could take our order.
5. Fenton's brother had a long, ragged mustache; wore a battered, shapeless felt hat; and kept a towel tucked into his waistband.
or
Fenton's brother had a long and ragged mustache, wore a battered and shapeless felt hat, and kept a towel tucked into his waistband.

        Over the high coast mountains and over the valleys the gray clouds marched in from the ocean.  The wind blew fiercely and silently, high in the air, and it swished in the brush, and it roared in the forests.  The clouds came in brokenly, in puffs, in folds, in gray crags; and they piled in together and settled low over the west.  And then the wind stopped and left the clouds deep and solid.  The rain began with gusty showers, pauses and downpours, and then gradually it settled to a single tempo, small drops and a steady beat. . . .  For two days the earth drank the rain, until the earth was full.

(from The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck)