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Coordinating Conjunctions

George and Homer missed the deer, and it disappeared

Words that specialize in joining together units are traditionally called conjunctions. They come in two main sets, coordinating conjunctions like and and but and subordinating conjunctions like since and if. One reason for remembering the existence of the annoying class of conjunctive adverbs (like therefore and however is that sometimes people misapply the rule for punctuating conjunctive adverbs and use it with conjunctions. The first two sentences below have conjunctive adverbs and are punctuated correctly; the next two have conjunctions and should have been punctuated with just one comma in place of the semi-colon:

(1) The vice president missed the deer; therefore, he decide to shoot Homer. (2) The vice president missed the dear; however, he managed to wound Homer. (3) *The vice president missed the deer; but, he did manage to wound Homer.
(4) *The vice president missed the deer, since, he really wanted to shoot Homer.

One other cause of mispunctuated sentences like these is having been told to put in commas where one takes a breath. That rule of thumb may be better than nothing, but it leads one astray quite often. To punctuate as called for in Standard English, one needs to understand at least a bit about syntax. Both coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions may be preceded by commas when they join clauses, but they do not have to be followed by commas, no matter how big a breath you might take.

Exercise 1: Coordinating Conjunctions and Conjunctive Adverbs

Some of the unpunctuated sentences below have coordinating conjunctions; others, conjunctive adverbs. The conjunctions should be punctuated with commas unless the units are very short; the conjunctive adverbs, with semi-colons and with commas setting off the adverbs. Say what is true of a given sentence and punctuate it correctly.
1.01 He wanted a puppy and I gave in
1.02 The dog only cost two dollars still the upkeep can be considerable.
1.03 I wanted to feed it table scraps but he held out for some fancy dog food.
1.04 The dog food cost mega dollars the actual cost of the dog therefore being very high.
1.05 Nevertheless it is nice to have dog hairs all over the couch.
1.06 Turn out the lights or throw your coat over the lamp
1.07 I like total darkness otherwise I have trouble turning into a bat
1.08 I want to go flying tonight however I've heard that Buffy is lurking around.
1.09 There is nothing worse than a busy-body anyway I've heard terrible things about her.
1.10 I hate gossip incidentally.

The main coordinating conjunctions (also called coordinators) are and, but, and or, and you should know them. The only other words which get labelled coordinating conjunctions are for, nor, and so. They can be used to join any two things of the same kind, from individual parts of speech to independent clauses:

(5) George and Homer missed the dear, and it disappeared.
The first use of "and" in (5) is joining together two nouns so that they serve together as a subject. This kind of structure is called a compound subject. We can join together full noun phrases this way as well, as in the compound subject of sentence (6) or the compound direct object of sentence (7):
(6) The president and his brother missed the deer.
(7) The deer escaped the president and his brother.

For purposes of subject-verb agreement, compound subjects joined by and are almost always treated as plural. Writers are often tempted to use a singular verb by mistake, especially when the subjects come complete with modifiers that can make us lose track of where we are. Sentence (8) is wrong; sentence (9) corrects it:

(8) *His knowledge of the subject and his ability to express that knowledge has improved in this course
(9) His knowledge of the subject and his ability to express that knowledge have improved in this course
An exception to this rule occurs when the two singular nouns joined by and are preceded by each or every. In such cases, always use a singular verb:
(10) Every man and woman has certain rights
When coordinating conjunctions other than and are used in a compound sentence, the verb agrees in number with the noun phrase closest to it:
(11) Neither she nor her friends have any manners to speak of

Looking again at sentence (5), we remember that there is another and joining together "George and Homer missed the deer" and "it disappeared," each of which could be a sentence by itself. This kind of structure is called a compound sentence. A clause that could be a sentence is an IP with the I-slot filled with a tense or modal--what we earlier called an independent clause.

Problems in Using Coordinators. Beginning a sentence with and, but, or or is acceptable in Standard English if what follows otherwise meets the standards for an independent clause, though it has been condemned so often in school handbooks that many people think of it as an error. Since this group includes many instructors, even in English, it can be safest to avoid such structures in college writing.

The usual rule for punctuating coordinating conjunctions is that we use a comma in front of the conjunction when they are joining independent clauses. It is never wrong and always safe to use a comma in such cases. If the clauses being joined are fairly short, the comma is not needed for clarity and can be omitted unless one is writing for a purist.

Even when the phrases being joined are very long, we should not use a comma in front of the conjunction when they are not independent clauses. A sentence with a compound predicate like (10) does not need a comma in front of it, but one is perfectly appropriate in a compound sentence like (11):

(12) The vice president missed the deer he was aiming at and hit his friend in the calf.
(13) Homer missed the deer, and the vice president shot Homer.

If we were writing phrase structure rules, we have to include some showing that every kind of word or phrase can be compounded, including the S (or IP) itself, something like NP --> NP and NP. By convention, our phrase structure trees for coordinate structures look like this:

Alternative Questions The Coordinating conjunction or is often used to ask alternative questions, where the listener or reader is asked to choose between two alternatives. This can be done with coordinate constructions at various levels:

(14) Do you want to stop now, or shall we go on to Chicago?
(15) Will George being doing this, or Martha?
(16) Shall we walk to the store or drive there?

Just for the Record: Correlative Conjunctions. When a conjunction is paired with another word to help coordinate two units, the two are sometimes referred to as correlative conjunctions:

(17) It's time for her to choose either him or me.
(18) Not only have I an earache, but my wife has left me.
(19) Both his name and his hair are false.
Similar pairs occur with subordinating constructions, though these pairs are less apt to be termed "correlative":
(20) As Kenosha goes, so goes Southeastern Wisconsin.
(21) If will be my bodyguard, then I will be your long lost friend.

How Much of This Will be on the Test?
This section has focussed on coordinating conjunctions, which you should be able to identify and distinguish from conjunctive adverbs. You should be able to associate these conjunctions with terms like compound sentence and compound subject.