Want to Write Well? Don't Ignore the Smaller Parts of Speech

It’s GRAMMAR time.

Today I want to talk about coordinating conjunctions. By which I mean these seven little words:

For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So

In the video above, I explain that coordinating conjunctions join words, phrases, or clauses of the same grammatical rank. Scott Rice says, “Coordinating conjunctions announce the arrival of similar or related structures (and information). When the structures are not similar or related, we have faulty parallelism.”

Faulty parallelism means you’re linking stuff that doesn’t belong together. You can read a quick and excellent fix-it guide here.

But just to remind you, I’m not interested in teaching correct grammar. I’m interested in how writers wield grammar for rhetorical purposes. To tell a good story, to create a feeling, to manage time, to release meanings.

In the video, I warn how misusing coordinating conjunctions can make your writing sound naïve, or godly, or like a bad Hemingway imitation.

Scare tactics to talk about conjunctions? Really, Sara?

Here’s a more exciting and upbeat way to think about them.

Copy out that little list of Seven Words and pick up a piece of writing you love. Where do you find those coordinating conjunctions? When and why are they deployed? Are they ever used at critical moments, or unexpected moments? Do they ever work ironically, to emphasize a connection that might have been, but isn’t there? If you changed out a coordinating conjunction for a subordinating conjunction, how might the meaning change?

Here are a few examples to get the conversation started.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. —Genesis

Here the “and” is used to glide the reader along and communicate God’s ease in doing Very Large and Miraculous Things. No need to subordinate a clause because there are no complications. God made the world. Next!

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, “In Another Country”

Here the speaker is an American soldier in a hospital in Milan. He and the Italian soldiers, all wounded, feel disconnected from the war and from themselves. This is what today the kids call a “trauma” voice. The “ands” are used to suggest a voice that can’t organize itself, only report a series of sights and sensations. Andre Dubus rightly describes “In Another Country” as “a story about young men who have lost that joy in being alive which is normal for young and healthy people.”

Clang.

Clang.

Nate is shaping a horseshoe.

Oh, beautiful pure sound!

It turns everything else to silence.

But still, once in a while, the river gives an unexpected gurgle. “Slp,” it says, out of glassy-ridged brown knots sliding along the surface.

Clang.

And everything except the river holds its breath.

Now there is no scream. Once there was one and it settled slowly down to earth one hot summer afternoon; or did it float up, into that dark, too dark, blue sky? But surely it has gone away, forever. —Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Village.”

Bishop’s memoir begins with a little girl hearing her unwell mother scream. By the story’s end, the mother has been hospitalized. (In fact, Bishop never saw her mother again.) I’m giving you this chunk of prose because I want you to see how coordinating conjunctions work between sentences as well as within sentences. (Don’t ever listen to that rule about not beginning a sentence with “and” or “but.”) Unlike Hemingway—who crams his opening paragraph with conjunctions—Bishop withholds connectors so when the conjunctions flash out, their impact is sharply felt.

For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. Tiny words, but when you know how to wield them, they do a lot of work.

What do you remember learning (if you did) anything about conjunctions? For a lot of people my age, the education started with Schoolhouse Rock.