Connectors and an introduction to complex meaning

Relatedness

At the very least, a connector can confirm that two things are related.

Look at the snippet below. Are the two sentences related?

Brian turned the wheel slightly. The plane immediately banked to the right.

Being next to each other, we can assume that the plane banked because Brian turned the wheel, but we can make that clearer using the word 'and'.

Brian turned the wheel slightly and the plane immediately banked to the right.

Hatchet(2000)

What about this next snippet? Why use 'and' to connect these two statements?

I’d shot the other one just below the chest, and he was dead too.

Burning for Revenge(1993)

In this case, 'and' is showing that the man's death was related to being shot below the chest. Let's see what we get without the connector.

I'd shot the other one just below the chest. He was dead too.

Without 'and', we're not sure whether the man died from being shot, or if he had died beforehand. The statements might be related, but not necessarily. We'd need to use context and clues from the rest of the text to figure it out.

Let's write our own compound sentences using 'and' to show a relationship between two statements.

I bought some carrots and the family had a casserole for dinner.

The woman in the black cloak mouthed some words, and Rajan lunged at me.

You'll notice throughout this lesson that some compound sentences have a comma as well as a connector, and some just have the connector. A pure grammar guide might give you these rules:

  1. Add a comma whenever you are connecting two simple sentences:
    "I'd shot the other one just below the chest, and he was dead too."
  2. Don't add a comma if the actor and verb helpers are being carried through:
    "A bale of hay has come loose and spilt itself all over."

If you just want to leave it at that for your own writing, that's fine.

But we've already seen a whole bunch of snippets that don't follow those rules. So what's going on?

Commas create separation. Leaving out a comma that should be there can make two things feel more closely related:

"Brian turned the wheel slightly and the plane immediately banked to the right."

 vs.

"Brian turned the wheel slightly, and the plane immediately banked to the right."

 

Adding in commas slows the reader down. The commas in this snippet help the reader understand what's happening (or not happening), and add weightiness to the situation:

"But people weren't rushing to their next class, or playing around, or spinning the locks on their lockers."

 vs.

"But people weren't rushing to their next class or playing around or spinning the locks on their lockers."

 

It's important, though, if you're playing around with adding or removing commas, that you don't make your sentence harder to read or understand. If you're not sure, ask a friend to sense-check for you.

Write your own compound sentence (a sentence composed of two or more 'simple sentences') using 'and'. Think about what the connector adds to the meaning of the statements being connected.

You've probably noticed that the term 'relatedness' is pretty vague. In practice, using a word such as 'and' is often more about controlling the flow and rhythm within a paragraph than it is about creating complex meaning.

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