ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Let's say you wanted to connect a boat motor to a surfboard... you know, for…science? [Boat motor attached to a surfboard]

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Sure.

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For science.

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You might use some screws or duct tape.

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But what if you wanted to connect two complete thoughts together? [Man making an odd face]

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Sure you could try duct tape, but…it's not super effective.

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So put that roll of tape away and grab your handy roll of conjunctions!

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…okay so they don't come in a roll, whatever. [Man waiting for Write supplies]

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But before we try to use conjunctions, let's rewind for a second.

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Take a look at this sentence...

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“The boy ran to the store.”

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Pretty simple, huh?

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No frills, no sparkles.

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Just a capital letter, noun in the subject, verb in the predicate, and a period.

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Simple. [Hand uses rubber to rub out sentence]

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How about this one....

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“My teacher asked me a question.”

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Teacher is the subject, asked is the verb, and yup, simple is the sentence.

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Alright, now that we've got a grasp of simple sentences, let's move on to something a bit [Woman practicing yoga moves]

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more complex: compound sentences.

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These types of sentences still have a subject, a verb, a capital letter and an ending punctuation

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mark, but now they've also got a few extra bits to spice things up. [A selection of spice jars]

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Like a comma.

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Compound sentences always have a comma.

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And then right after that comma, they've got a conjunction.

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Like this example: “I wanted to go to the store, but I had to clean my room.”

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See the word that comes after the comma?

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But?

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But is a conjunction.

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So we took our two complete thoughts, "I wanted to go to the store," and "I had to clean my

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room," and we mashed them together with a nifty conjunction! [Sentences transformed together in a puff of smoke]

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Let's look at another example.

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“I wanted to go to the movies," and "I did my chores early."

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How would we make this a compound sentence?

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Bingo!

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A conjunction.

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"I wanted to go to the movies, so I did my chores early.”

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There's our comma in the middle, followed by “so,” our conjunction. [Sentences transformed into compound sentence]

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Let's do one more!

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“I think I'll get the red shirt," and "Maybe I'll get the blue one."

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We'd add in a beautiful little conjunction…in this case, "or," and we end up with,

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"I think I'll get the red shirt, or maybe I'll get the blue one.”

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In each of our examples, the comma and its conjunction serve to connect two separate [commas and conjunctions highlighted]

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and complete thoughts together into one sentence.

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Pretty simple, right?

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Wait, no.

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Complex?

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Complicated?

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Compound!

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That's it.

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Phew.

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All those conjunctions messed with our brain…good thing we've got this handy roll of duct tape [Man's head opens up and duct tape is placed on his brain]

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to put it back together!

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