Compound sentences

Compound sentences

The simplest way of joining two clauses is to use and. For example:

I told him and he shook his head in admiration
Travelling was a slow, tedious business but the difficulties were not insuperable.

And and but are conjunctions (a term deriving from the Latin for joining two things together). The two items they join are of equal status in the sentence, so they are described as co-ordinating conjunctions. Other similar conjunctions are or, then, yet.

Co-ordinating conjunctions can also be used to join words and phrases. For example:

bread and butter
the budget or the general election.

©John Seely 2008