Coordinate Conjunctions

1. Mary has returned, and John will return to-morrow.

2. Will you go in the carriage, or will you walk?

3. William the Silent was a man of few words, but his deeds were most effective.

4. You sent for me, therefore I am here.

In these sentences the conjunctions are and, or, but, and therefore. They join the different parts of the sentences.

As the parts of the sentences joined by these conjunctions are of equal force, the conjunctions are called co-ordinate conjunctions.

A co-ordinate conjunction is one that joins co-ordinate elements of a sentence.

Point out the conjunctions in the following sentences, and tell what they connect:

1. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, but the world is more and more.

2. Be it joy or be it sorrow, Duty's call we will obey.

3. Let not the emphasis of hospitality be in bed and board, but let truth and love and honesty and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.

4. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

5. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of which the golden days were constrained to pass.