What is a coordinating conjunction?
Coordinating conjunctions coordinate or join two or more sentences,
main clauses, words, or other parts of speech which are of the same syntactic
importance. Also known as coordinators, coordinating conjunctions are used to
give equal emphasis to a pair of main clauses.
Coordinating conjunctions always go between the words or phrases that
they are connecting, but the can also be used to start a sentence, as long as it
is a complete sentence and not left as a sentence fragment.
Rules for using a coordinating conjunction
1. Put a comma before the coordinating conjunction when it is used to connect
two independent clauses.
Example: I want to go see a movie, but my sister has my car.
2. When using a coordinating conjunction to connect two items, do not use a
comma.
Example: She likes apples and bananas.
Tom walked the dog and grabbed the mail.
("Tom walked the dog" is an independent clause, but "grabbed the mail" is not.)
3. When using a coordinating conjunction with a list of items (three or more in
number), the comma before the coordinating conjunction is optional.
Example: She is cooking chicken, potatoes, corn and carrot.