Definition
Some words are satisfied spending an evening at home, alone, eating ice-cream right out of the box, watching
Seinfeld
re-runs on TV, or reading a good book. Others aren't happy unless
they're out on the town, mixing it up with other words; they're
joiners and they just can't help themselves.
A conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects (conjoins) parts of a sentence.
Coordinating Conjunctions
The simple, little conjunctions are called
coordinating conjunctions (you can click on the words to see specific descriptions of each one):
(It may help you remember these conjunctions by recalling that they
all have fewer than four letters. Also, remember the acronym
FANBOYS:
For-
And-
Nor-
But-
Or-
Yet-
So. Be careful of the words
then and
now;
neither is a coordinating conjunction, so what we say about
coordinating conjunctions' roles in a sentence and punctuation does not
apply to those two words.