Conjunctions

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses.

Coordinating conjunctions

Connect units of equal grammatical status, which means you can change their order without changing their meaning. The most common ones spell out FANBOYS:

Other properties:

Some of these words are other parts of speech. Pay attention to when they act as joiners
often work with commas

Coordinate noun phrase

These can do the same job as an individual noun, including being an object:

Sara and I are going jogging.
You should come dancing with Jerry and me.

They can also be compound subjects and objects:

The dog and cat drank out of the puddle.

The verb type is determined by the conjunction:

Either Bill or Ted is coming. (singular)
Jack and Jill are here. (plural)
A coach or players are coming to the park. (closest to the verb dictates which verb)

Subordinate conjunction

Subordinate conjunctions link whole clauses that indicates a relationship between them and render one of the clauses dependent on the other. Some common examples:

because
until
than
although
while
after
if
when
since
unless
why
before
whether
once
where
even if
in order that
rather than

If a clause can stand on its own, its an independent clause. If you join them with a coordinating conjunction, they are coordinate clauses:

The campers were gone, and the bear ate the honey.

A subordinating conjunction makes one clause dependent (subordinate) on the other one, because it means that one clause needs the other to form a complete sentence:

[Because the campers were gone], the bear ate the honey. [subordinate clause]

Correlative conjunctions

These conjunctions work in pairs:

both…and
either…or
neither…nor
not…but
not only…but also
whether…or

Each part of the conjunction introduces a clause, phrase, or word that are similar in length:

It took not one but two attempts.
Whether we do or we don’t, we will probably be OK.
I believe that both the Yankees and the Red Sox will hit a home run.