Coordinating conjunctions

AND, BUT, FOR, NOR, OR, SO, YET

Officially, the function of conjunctions is to mark connections between ideas in discourse and text, and conjunctions are the most ubiquitous and probably the most lexically simple means of developing text cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Among the various types of conjunctions, coordinating conjunctions in particular determine a parallel relationship of ideas and syntactic units:

Coordinating conjunctions such as and, but, yet, and or can establish parallel relationships between and among virtually any types of syntactic units: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, and sentences. For example, the phrase labor, management, owners, and buyers consists of parallel nouns, all of which constitute the subject noun phrase of the sentence in the first example.

However, the structure the laborers in Hong Kong, the owners in New York, and the managers in both Hong Kong and New York, in fact, represents two different parallel constructions: (1) the phrase the laborers in Hong Kong is parallel to the owners in New York and the managers in ... and (2) the next phrase both Hong Kong and New York contains yet another parallel construction -Hong Kong and New York- conjoined by the both... and... coordinator.

On the other hand, two simple parallel sentences or two subordinate clauses can also be conjoined into parallel constructions:

[Parallel simple sentences] Marcus Tullius Cicero was a distinguished orator, and he was also a student of Greek philosophy.

[Parallel subordinate clauses] Cicero adopted the Stoic belief that natural law governs the universe and that all belong to common humanity. (Adapted from Perry, Peden, & Von Laue, 1999)

The flexibility of the coordinating conjunctions that allows them to conjoin practically any types of parallel words, phrases, or sentences is unquestionably a wonderful characteristic. However, it is this very characteristic that can cause much turmoil among the parallel syntactic elements and lead some L2 writers into peril when sentences do not seem to end. Another problem with coordinators is that, as mentioned, they are by far the most common and simple of all cohesive devices in English, and no matter how long one's sentences are, they do not fool many people into thinking that their author is a sophisticated writer.

Also remember that when you join two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction to form a compound sentence, you must put a comma before the conjunction:

independent clause #1, coordinating conjunction independent clause #2

Be careful, however, to avoid linking nonrelated ideas, such as in:

You should also avoid using coordinating conjunctions to string too many ideas together. For example:

Poor
*I went to the park and I watched David play volleyball and I swam in the pool and then I went home.

Revised
After I watched David play volleyball in the park, I swam in the pool and then went home.