Conjunctions
Have you seen how children write when they’re first learning? They write in short little sentences that sound rather robotic:
My name is Anna. I am five years old. I am a girl.
I have a mother. I have a father. I have a brother.
I have a cat. I like hot dogs.
When they get a little older, they learn to connect some of those sentences so it’s not so choppy:
My name is Anna, and I am five years old. I am a girl.
I have a mother, a father, a brother, and a cat. I like
hot dogs.
Notice the use of and; that’s the magic key to not sounding like a robot. And is a conjunction; conjunctions are one of the things we use to connect ideas to create a smoothly flowing sentence which is clearly understandable to the reader.
Conjunctions are great things, but you can have too much of a good thing. When conjunctions are overused, you have run-on sentences.