How to link ideas in sentences

When writing, it is often necessary to link ideas  together. Conjunctions are linking words, such as 'and', 'because', 'then', 'however', that help your reader follow your train of thought, or see the connection or relationship between ideas and arguments.

Conjunctions can also add clarity to your writing, especially an argument or essay. They can help you write longer sentences without sounding awkward. Your writing will benefit from using a variety of conjunctions, as well as using the common conjunctions of 'and' 'then' or 'because'.

There are several types of conjunctions, including coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions as well as conjunctive adverbs.

Coordinating conjunctions connect words, phrases and clauses. Clauses are the building blocks of a sentence and conjunctions can help link them together. Coordinating conjunctions are placed between the words and phrases they are linking, not at the start or end of a sentence.

There are seven coordinating conjunctions. The phrase FAN BOYS can be used to remember them:

These conjunctions often link equal parts of the whole sentence and bring ideas together:

• ‘Many people are trying to cut down on their plastic use, so they carry reusable shopping bags.’
• ‘Plastic in the ocean is causing damage to animals, and litter is destroying their habitat.’

The conjunctions 'so' and 'and' in the examples above link the ideas together and make the connection clear to the reader.

Place the FAN BOYS

Conjunctive adverbs can also be used to link ideas in your writing. They are used in a similar way to coordinating conjunctions. These are some examples:

• however
• also
• therefore
• meanwhile
• nevertheless

Unlike coordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs can be placed anywhere in a sentence:

• ‘Sam trained hard for his race; however, he didn’t achieve a personal best.’
• ‘Sam trained hard for his race; he didn’t achieve a personal best, however.’

Notice that a semicolon is usually required to separate clauses when using conjunctive adverbs within a sentence.

Find the odd one out

Subordinating conjunctions link two clauses together, a main clause and a subordinate clause, and help to show the relationship between the clauses.

The relationship between them could be related to the order in which something happens, expressed using a subordinating conjunction such as when, before or after.

For example, ‘Before completing the assignment, students should undertake the reading.’

Here ‘students should undertake the reading’ is the main, or independent, clause. ‘Before completing the assignment’ tells us when they should do it.

They can also indicate a cause and effect relationship - when something happens because something else has happened.

For example, ‘Her hands were cold because she had forgotten her gloves.’

The cold hands have been caused by the lack of gloves - the effect of no gloves are cold hands. These conjunctions are very useful when structuring an argument, in order to show a cause and effect relationship.

Some more subordinating conjunctions used to indicate cause and effect are:

• consequently
• therefore

Subordinating conjunctions tend to add more information to the main part of the sentence. Clauses that start with a subordinating conjunction can also be moved to the start of the sentence, unlike coordinating conjunctions:

• ‘Although she was tired, she kept running.’
• ‘She kept running, although she was tired.’

Find the missing subordinating conjunction

Comparing and contrasting conjunctions link ideas that are similar or different:

• equally
• similarly
• likewise
• in comparison
• whereas
• in contrast
• alternatively
• otherwise

These conjunctions are very important if you are writing a direct comparison of two or more things:

Many African countries have banned plastic bags; in contrast America does not have a nationwide ban.

Many of these conjunctions can be used to structure an overall argument, as well as link ideas within sentences. Experiment with using different types of conjunctions and see the effect they can have on your writing.