coordination

Definition:

The grammatical connection of two or more ideas to give them equal emphasis and importance. Contrast with subordination. See also:

• Parataxis
• Parataxis in Steinbeck's "Paradox and Dream"
• Compound Sentence
• Conjunction
• Disjunction
• Coordination in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland"
• What Is the Running Style?
• Sentence Building With Coordinators
• Grammatically Speaking, Nancy Pelosi Is a Coordinator
• Hendiadys

Etymology:

From the Latin, "ordered together"

Examples and Observations:

• "One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night."
  (Ernest Hemingway, "A Very Short Story")



• "He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge."
  (Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder")



• "The technique of coordination, of putting together compound structures in sentences, is old hat: you've been doing it all your life. . . . Within the sentence our most common connectors are the coordinate conjunctions, which combine two structures of equal rank: and, but, or, for, yet."
  (Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar, Allyn and Bacon, 1999)

Pronunciation: ko-OR-di-NAY-shun