What are English conjunctions and how to use them?

Have you noticed that your English writing is full of short sentences and is repetitive? If you want that your text flows in a more smoothly way, you might need to use conjunctions to join the sentences.

Conjunctions are also known as ‘linking words’ because they join phrases and link ideas. Without conjunctions, we would only be able to make simple sentences. Let’s take a look at a text using very short sentences and few conjunctions.

Short sentences can seem choppy. Long sentences can seem wordy. Both types are useful. If we use only short sentences in a text, it can be tedious to read. If we use only long sentences in a text, it can be confusing to read. People may lose interest in what we have to say.

Reading this text was a bit boring, right? Now we are going to use conjunctions to link ideas and sound more natural and fluent.

Short sentences can seem choppy while long sentences can seem wordy but both types are useful. If we use only short sentences in a text, it can be tedious to read. However, if we use only long sentences in a text, it can be confusing to read, and people may lose interest in what we have to say.

How can we know which conjunction to use? It depends on the purpose of the sentence.

• To show the relationship between ideas we can use ‘as … as’, ‘both …and‘, ‘neither … nor‘.

• To link two contrasting ideas we can use ‘but‘, ‘although‘, ‘though‘.

• To link two alternate ideas we can use ‘or‘.

• To say that one thing is dependent of another we can use ‘because‘, ‘since‘, ‘so‘.

Don’t use too many conjunctions in a phrase to avoid writing run-on sentences. If a sentence is difficult to understand, don’t use conjunctions to make it longer instead try to explain the main idea in a shorter way.

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