Connectors: one meaning, four different grammars

Connectors do not earn their marks in one task but a few at a time across four. In editing a second linking word on the same link, or a linking word with no main clause to attach to, is a regular surplus word. In the cloze and the open gap-fill a linking word is often the answer, and in the cloze it often sits among the options you have to weed out. In the blog comment connectors feed Organisation and coherence, one of the four criteria of the writing scale, and its top band asks for variety of linking devices.

So the article does not open with a list of connectors sorted by relation. It opens with the line that sent you here, and after it come the same words in three other tasks.

The line that sent you here

You most likely came here from editing, from a line like this one. Solve it once more: one word in it is surplus.

The line reads smoothly to many learners, because plenty of languages mark a contrast twice, once in each part of the sentence, and a reason with its result the same way. English marks each link once: Although …, but is an error, and so is Because …, so.

The rule and a table

A subordinate clause is a part of a sentence with a subject and a predicate of its own, attached by a conjunction: although she was tired is the subordinate clause, she still cooked dinner the main one. When both parts share a subject, although can drop it together with was: although tired in the opening line means although she was tired. The conjunction that introduces the clause has already said how the two parts are related. One link, one conjunction, and two parts for it to join. A second word doing the same job gets crossed out, and so does a conjunction left with nothing to join.

After that the choice rests on the shape of whatever stands to the right of the connector: two words with one meaning demand different things after them. Although takes a whole clause, despite takes a noun or an -ing form (a gerund, a verb doing the work of a noun: raining), however opens a new sentence and is cut off by a comma, and but joins two parts inside one sentence. Your own language most likely has the same four: a word for each of although, despite, however and but. The table below is needed at every item that follows; keep it open.

You have read the rule. Test it on four lines: each breaks the rule in a different place, or not at all.

You can now see a doubled link and a missing one. Next the connector stands alone, and what breaks is no longer the connector itself but what has ended up on its right.

What stands to the right of the connector

In the cloze one gap comes with four options. Here is one such gap.

The full stop to the left of the gap weeded out three options of four, and nobody compared any meanings. The same test works in the open gap-fill, where you write the word in yourself: in spite of needs a noun on its right, even though a clause. Next comes a gap where the test does not work at all, because the same thing stands to the right of all four options.

When the right side is the same for all

When grammar says nothing, you read the left column of the table rather than the right ones. The same holds for connectors of condition and purpose, which the table above leaves out. Almost all of them take a clause, so the shape does not decide between them; the relation does.

Four gaps, one word each, and in every one a clause stands on the right.

You now run both tests in order: first the shape on the right, then the relation. The last pass gives two lines on the shape on the right, one of them clean.

Two lines in a row

The clean line first is not a courtesy: editing plants clean lines on purpose, and a long connector such as because of is exactly what makes a clean line look suspicious.

What to take away

Four places where this earns or costs marks:

Editing: where a second conjunction, or a conjunction with no main clause, is the surplus word Multiple choice cloze: where four options meet one gap, and the shape on the right weeds out before meaning does Open gap-fill: where you write in the connector yourself, often one piece of a two- or three-word one Blog comment: where the band descriptor demands variety of connectors, not quantity