Language

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that connect or link phrases, sentences, clauses, or words together. You can think of this words as words that join phrases or different parts of a sentence together.

Most people remember these common junctions through the acronym or word FANBOYS. (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)

A conjunction combines the two sentences with a word, and we usually use a comma when combining two sentences with a conjunction. Look at the following example:

Tom likes to eat pizza, but Sarah likes to eat hamburgers.

There are 3 types of conjunctions: coordinating, subordinating, and correlative.

Prepositions

Prepositions are words that tell you where something is located or positioned compared to something else. Aside from telling you where something is located, prepositions can also tell you when something happened. We use prepositions all the time when we are describing people, places, and things. Look at the example below.

Example: The cup is sitting on the table.

In this sentence, the preposition is the bolded word "on". Since the subject (focus) of the sentence is the "cup", the preposition tells us where the cup is! In this case, the cup is on the table!

There is a list of prepositions to the right!

Introductory Commas

"Introduction" means something that starts a passage!

An introductory comma should ALWAYS be used following a dependent introductory phrase or clause. A dependent introductory phrase or clause is a set of words that appears before the main body of a sentence. They prepare your reader for what the rest of the sentence will be about!

Introductory clauses that need an introductory comma include those that start with adverbs like after, although, as, because, before, if, since, though, until, when, etc.

• If you want to win, you must practice every day.

• Because she begged insistently, I gave the little dog a treat.

Introductory phrases are not complete sentences. They contain participial (adjectives that look like verbs) phrases , appositives (interjections that give more information about a noun), prepositional phrases, and other clauses instead of subject and a verb.