What are Coordinating sentences?

We all know the mean­ing of “coor­di­na­tion” which means some­thing that sup­port our ideas and “sub­or­di­nate” means some­thing of lesser impor­tance. As the name sug­gests, coor­di­nat­ing sen­tences and sub­or­di­nat­ing sen­tences are very much use­ful in form­ing the rela­tion­ships between the ideas and tells us about the ideas that are sup­port­ing our idea or our sen­tence and the sen­tences that are mak­ing our sen­tences lower in posi­tion. These kinds of sen­tences are very much impor­tant in Eng­lish as we may have to empha­size or reduce the impor­tance of sev­eral issues in the sen­tences that we use. Let us know when to use coor­di­nat­ing sen­tence parts and how to use these coor­di­nat­ing sentences. To get practice, you can find applications to learn English on this site.

We gen­er­ally use the coor­di­nate sen­tences when we want to com­pare any equally impor­tant ideas in a sen­tence and com­bine two inde­pen­dent clauses. Usu­ally we use the fol­low­ing meth­ods to coor­di­nate sen­tence parts:

• Coor­di­na­tion using a conjunction

The con­junc­tions that we use for coor­di­nat­ing the sen­tences are and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet etc. Each of these con­junc­tions rep­re­sent a dif­fer­ent mean­ing and used in dif­fer­ent situations.

“And” is used to link between or com­bine two ideas.

“But” is used to com­bine two con­trast ideas.

“For” is used to show a cause.

“Nor” is used to give a neg­a­tive meaning.

• Using a pair of cor­rel­a­tive conjunctions

Some of the exam­ples for the pair of coor­di­na­tive con­junc­tions include either-or, neither-nor, not only-but also etc.

E.g. He is nei­ther best nor worst.

These are used to com­bine dif­fer­ent sen­tences which coor­di­nate each other. These show a bal­ance between two inde­pen­dent clauses.

• Coor­di­na­tion using a semicolon

Semi­colon is used to link two inde­pen­dent clauses that are of equal impor­tance. Gen­er­ally we rep­re­sent the cause and result kind of sen­tences sep­a­rated using a semicolon.

E.g. Sheela went to the mar­ket; she brought fresh vegetables.

• Coor­di­na­tion using a con­junc­tive verb

Con­junc­tive verbs include there­fore, as a result, for exam­ple, in addi­tion, how­ever etc.

These are also com­monly used con­junc­tives which are used to indi­cate dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships between the sen­tences. When we are using these kinds of con­junc­tives we need to decide which ideas can be com­bined to give the exact mean­ing. The incor­rect usage of these con­junc­tions to rep­re­sent the rela­tion­ships between the ideas leads to the change in the meaning.

E.g. The cre­ation of com­put­ers has greatly helped the soci­ety; in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing the job oppor­tu­ni­ties, it also improved our life styles.