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FANBOYS at the Beginning of a Sentence 2532 Views

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English Language

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Transcript

00:04
FANBOYS at the beginning of a sentence, a la Shmoop.
00:07
There's no experience quite like babysitting toddler triplets of the male persuasion.
00:11
You'll always have the difficult task of convincing the demon spawn to go down for
00:16
nap time.
00:17
If you're lucky, though, someday you'll conquer those triplet hellions...

00:20
...and the FANBOYS grammar rule. The acronym FANBOYS comes from the list of
00:26
coordinating conjunctions...
00:27
..."for", "and", "nor", "but", "or", "yet", and "so".
00:37
Coordinating conjunctions join together similarly constructed words, phrases, or clauses.
00:45
For example, you -- babysitter extraordinaire -- might say, "I told Bert to pee in the
00:52
potty, but Bert decided to pee on the carpet instead."
00:57
In this example, the coordinating conjunction "but" joins two main clauses: "I told
01:02
Bert to pee in the potty"...
01:04
...and "Bert decided to pee on the carpet instead".
01:10
Coordinating conjunctions bring words, phrases, and clauses together, so you tend to see them
01:14
in the middle of sentences.
01:15
But that doesn't mean one of the FANBOYS can't make an appearance at the beginning of a sentence.
01:19
For example, when you terrify your friends with tales of your babysitting experiences,
01:24
you might end a story with, "And then the little brat threw jelly on my shirt"...
01:29
...or, "So I bribed him with gummy bears and Dr. Pepper."
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Although grammar guides will tell you it's cool to use a coordinating conjunction to
01:36
start a sentence...
01:37
...your English teacher may have told you that this is a no-no, for two reasons.
01:41
First, starting a sentence with one of the FANBOYS lends an informal tone to your writing,
01:47
and teens are... informal enough as it is. Second, it's easier to end up with random,
01:53
incorrect sentence fragments if you start sentences with coordinating conjunctions.
01:57
"Or washing the Impala" may start with a coordinating conjunction...
02:02
...but it's just a sentence fragment, and therefore grammatically incorrect.
02:05
Now that we've confirmed it's okay to start a sentence with one of the FANBOYS...
02:10
...thus ruining your English teacher's life...
02:12
...you may be wondering if commas are required after coordinating conjunctions. The answer
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is: "Sometimes." If the coordinating conjunction at the beginning
02:21
of a sentence is followed by an aside, then you need to break out the commas.
02:28
For example, if you were to write about one of the hell spawn you babysit and his penchant
02:33
for harassing the dog...
02:34
...you would say, "And -- comma -- even though Fido hid under the bed -- comma -- little
02:40
Jakey still managed to set the dog on fire."
02:45
The simpler "And little Jakey still managed to set the dog on fire", however, does not
02:50
require a comma after the coordinating conjunction. And that's pretty much it for the FANBOYS.
02:56
You can use them at the beginning of sentences, so long as you want your tone to be informal...
03:00
...and you're careful to avoid grammatically incorrect sentence fragments.
03:03
Now, don't you have some triplets to tame?
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