Conjunctions

Conjunctions, in its simplest form, are known as those words which connect two sentences or phrases together. These words are used in order to remove the need of full stops and to make the sentences flow. For example:

James went to the market. James bought a new t-shirt.
James went to the market and bought a new t-shirt.

The word ‘and’ works as a connection between the two sentences and joins them. There are primarily three kinds of conjunctions and we shall learn about them one by one in the sections below:

Coordinating Conjunctions: This category of conjunctions deals with those sentences which are equal in importance. Both the sentences joined by these conjunctions are grammatically correct and complete in themselves.

There are mainly seven coordinating conjunctions and they are – for, and, nor, but, yet, or, soon.
Few examples regarding the use of these conjunctions are:
James went to the mall and bought a cap.
Katy doesn’t want Chinese or Thai food.
He reached the station but still missed the train.

In the examples cited above, the use of conjunctions can be seen clearly. The words marked in bold connect two equally important and meaningful sentences together in order to make the sentence flow better.

Subordinating Conjunctions: These are those conjunctions, which join an independent sentence with a subordinate sentence. One of the sentences is complete in itself, while the other depends on the first sentence for complete meaning. In order to understand better, here are some examples:

She went to watch the game because it was her favorite team.
Although it was chilly, they still went outside.

In the first sentence, the word ‘because’ is joining the complete sentence ‘she went to watch the game’ with the dependent sentence ‘it was her favorite team’. Similar action of ‘although’ can be seen in the second sentence.

Correlative Conjunctions: These types of conjunctions come in pairs and their objective is to join groups of words together in a sentence. They do not link sentences, but link words having the same importance together within the sentence.

Some examples of correlative conjunctions are:
Not only did he slap him, but also broke his glasses.
Both the girls and the boys were to blame for the chaos.
You need to choose between either chess or carom.

The words marked in bold are pairs of conjunctions which are joining the group of words together.

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