Archive for October, 2010

Uses of And

October 8th, 2010 in Improve English

And is used to join two or more grammatically similar expressions.

Bread and butter
Jack and Jill

When there are more than two items, we usually put and before the last.

They drank, sang and danced. (NOT They drank and sang and danced.)

Fixed expressions with and

There are several common expressions with and. Note that these have a fixed word order which can’t be changed.

Examples:

Bread and butter (NOT Butter and bread)
Black and white (NOT White and black)
Hands and knees
Young and pretty
Knife and fork
Cup and saucer
Thunder and lightning

And is not usually used with adjectives placed before a noun.

That was a nice, long story. (NOT That was a nice and long story.)
She married a tall, dark, handsome fellow.

They deal in cheap wooden garden furniture.

Note that and is used when the adjectives refer to different parts of the
same thing.

A black and white photo (NOT a black white photo)
He was wearing red and blue socks. (NOT …red blue socks)

Nice and

The expression nice and is often used to modify an adjective or adverb. It
means something like ‘pleasantly’ or ‘suitably’.

It was nice and warm inside the room. (= It was pleasantly warm inside the
house.)

And is a coordinating conjunction. It is used to join two or more clauses of equal importance or rank. The clauses joined by and express relationships such as time, cause and effect, contrast and condition.

She won the prize and surprised us all. (Cause and effect)
She is a professor and her husband is a peon. (Contrast)
She opened the book and started reading. (Time)