8. Understanding Conjunctions

The conjunction is a part of speech. The word conjunction means to join together. In English, conjunctions help us join thoughts together to make a sentence. The two types of conjunctions we use most often are coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.

Coordinating Conjunctions – These are the FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or yet, so. Coordinating conjunctions, used with a comma, connect two complete thoughts to make a compound sentence.

I play baseball, and my sister plays volleyball.

I like to read comics, but my sister reads big books.

Subordinating Conjunctions – These are the subordinate clause words. We use them to start a subordinate clause when we write a complex sentence. Some subordinating conjunctions: after, although, because, before, if, since, unless, whenever, while

Because our car has a flat tire, we can’t go to the movie theater.

Whenever a runner goes past our house, the dog barks.

Remember – Use coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions to join clauses into a sentence.