This is the third of a short series of articles on the short list of what are known as coordinating conjunctions, short words themselves that show up very frequently in the GMAT Sentence Correction questions. Learning them can save you time, allowing you to eliminate wrong answer choices quickly and confidently; understanding them will of course also help add style and clarity to your AWA and admissions applications.  These coordinating conjunctions are often remembered by the acronym FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So); their job in a sentence is joining two or more parallel  . . . well, things in a sentence.

1. These words can join single words (Would you like an adorable puppy or kitten?);
2. whole phrases (He plans to run five miles today and go to the all-you-can-eat buffet by the end of the week);
3. or entire independent clauses — things that would stand alone as complete sentences without the conjunction (I would love to try the peaches, but the fuzz gives me the chills).

The things these conjunctions connect must be the same type of thing — an adverb and another adverb, a noun and a noun, an independent clause with another independent clause.  Just as you can only add fractions when they have the same denominator, you can only use parallel parts with coordinating conjunctions.  All of these coordinating conjunctions also have at least one other job in English.

III.  NOR

Nor is the third of our FANBOYS, and is the least common of them, but still a force to be reckoned with on the GMAT because of the expected parallelism and the few wrinkles in its usage.  It is most often used in lists of things after an initial negative, the most common of which is the combination neither . . . nor.  The three things you need to know about nor are:

• Rule 1: Things connected by nor need to be parallel (with or without the presence of neither)
• Rule 2: Nor can preceded by a negative that is something other than nor (such as not, or never, and of course neither)
• Rule 3: When nor joins two things (nouns or pronouns) in the subject of a sentence, and both parts are the same number (singular or plural), then the verb will match that number (singular or plural); when nor joins two things in the subject of a sentence and the two parts differ in number, the verb will take the number of the part closer to the verb

Rule 1 should be familiar to you from not only the other FANBOYS, but also the many other times on the GMAT (and in English grammar) that parallelism is needed.  Perhaps this rule could have gone unstated, but we want you to get the best score you can on the GMAT.

A consequence of Rule 2 is that you will never see neither (as a conjunction) without nor, but you may see nor without neither.  Examples:

She has not told anyone what you said, nor has she given any indication that something is wrong.

The police determined that Miss Scarlet had never entered the library that day, nor had she, according to fingerprint evidence, ever touched the revolver.

No manned mission to Mars has taken place, nor is one planned for the near future.

Examples of Rule 3:

Neither Holly nor Eydie will answer the phone when Erika is not home. (two singular subjects with a singular verb)

Neither bottles of rat poison nor bags of broken glass are appropriate gifts for the host of the party. (two plural subjects with a plural verb)

Neither the high school athlete nor that child’s parents decide who plays each game. (one singular, one plural subject with a plural verb)

Neither the high school athlete’s parents nor the athlete herself decides who plays each game. (one singular, one plural subject with a singular verb)

Some say it is a rule that when you have nor joining a singular and a plural, the plural always goes second (and therefore you will always have a plural verb if at least one of the parts is plural).  If this is easier for you to remember in your own writing, or if your school’s or employer’s style manual requires it, then by all means follow this rule — but be careful on the GMAT!

In the next article we will cover: BUT

See other articles in this series:
Coordinating Conjunctions: “For,” FANBOYS Part 1 of 7
Coordinating Conjunctions: “And,” FANBOYS Part 2 of 7