Coordination

I have a confession: I am a bit clumsy. Actually, in the service of absolute honesty, I can be completely uncoordinated. This is due to working on one task physically while keeping another one going mentally and usually results in a bumped forehead, a scraped knee, an occasional tumble, and a hilariously sardonic comment from my wife, friends, family, or anyone else who gets the privilege of witnessing my inability to multitask.

Fortunately, this is not the kind of coordination I want to talk about here! Instead, let’s explore the fundamentals of coordination in our writing.

Background

As a concept, coordination can carry with it a veritable tome of linguistic theory. While coordination is most formally the creation of complex syntax by linking two or more conjuncts, and while scholars have pored over the nuances for decades, the simplest definition will probably suffice:

Coordination combines two elements (words, phrases, clauses, etc.) of equal weight.

We all use coordination in our daily verbal and written communication. Below are a few examples I found in this week’s BBC news:

• There are now at least nine cases in the county and one additional [case] in Polk County (from an article about an outbreak of measles in Florida).

• The beauty of Final Fantasy VII's storytelling is how deftly it marries the personal drama of its characters with tightly paced plottingand steadily escalating stakes (from an article about the legacy of the video game Final Fantasy VII).

• In the same way that some people like to read a book on Kindle but also want to have a book as a physical object, a lot of people like vinyl and streaming (a quote from Kate Bush about records and record stores).

Each example uses coordination to join different elements into larger sentences. More importantly, these sentences each join different parts of speech or phrases, showing how coordination applies broadly to all manners of writing.

As an author, mastering coordination allows you to creatively structure more syntactically complex sentences without reducing your audiences’ ability to easily understand what you mean. Keep that in the back of your mind as we analyze some practical examples that would be right at home in your documentation.

FANBOYS

Before we go any further, let’s review the coordinating conjunctions – the main words in English that coordinate two elements. Using the famous mnemonic FANBOYS, these are:

• For
• And
• Nor
• But
• Or
• Yet
• So

When you see a coordinating conjunction, you can often determine the other elements in the sentence that coordinate together. Be sure to keep in mind that these conjunctions do not all serve identical purposes!

• and, or, and nor indicate logical connections
• but and yet indicate equal alternatives
• for and so indicate causal or inferential connections (illative, for those who are sticklers for the more formal terminology!)

Because I want to restrict our scope to fundamentals, all of the following examples will use one of the conjunctions above.

Inferring Connections

Most technical writers have written about a login page at some point, so our first example is simple:

On the Login Page, enter your username and password in the provided fields.

This is a straightforward imperative that establishes (1) a system location and (2) set of credentials that I will need to enter. What might not be obvious is that coordinating the nouns username and password give them equal precedence within the sentence. In doing so, I can infer that they are both equal parts of the login process without any additional details; the structure (including the dependent clause about the Login Page) tells me that they are both credentials that are co-located on the same page. To make this even clearer, consider a contrasting instruction:

Enter your username in the provided field on the Login Page. Next, enter your password.

While I can determine that these actions are sequential parts of a common process, the syntax does not give them equal footing. I can no longer assume co-located fields or that they have a fundamental connection to one another.

Ambiguous Coordination

The next example seems to offer equality between the elements, but see if you can identify how a reader may misinterpret it:

You may verify your account using a direct invitation code or your membership ID and date of birth.

This instruction uses two different conjunctions (or, and) and three related elements (direct invitation code, membership ID, and date of birth). As with the previous example, the instructions attempt to create two elements of equal weight. What is unclear is where a reader can draw that distinction. This type of coordination is known as nested coordination. These structures require additional information, and without context, a reader cannot determine how to group the different elements. This leads to two different interpretations:

1. You may verify your account using [a direct invitation code or your membership ID] and date of birth.

2. You may verify your account using a direct invitation code or [your membership ID and date of birth].

When you edit documentation, always pay attention to ambiguous constructions like these that may emerge. If you want to assign equal weight to one set of elements over another, you can add guiding language, but you can also solve the problem with a couple of numbers:

You may verify your account using (1) a direct invitation code or (2) your membership ID and date of birth.

The message is now crystal clear!

Distributing Ideas

Several scholastic test developers may find qualms with this next strategy, but coordination can vastly reduce your word count (my apologies to everyone who lives and dies by essays with length requisites!). The following example takes a single subject and distributes it to each coordinated element:

The system will intake the daily flat file, extract and transform each ID into readable formats, and write the resulting values to the database.

With the system in the subject position, readers will immediately apply this subject to the three verb phrases: (1) intake the daily flat file, (2) extract and transform each ID, and (3) write the resulting values. As with most of the examples in this article, this is not something we consciously assess as we write. English syntax requires that we interpret the subject and predicate in this way. However, if you break down the sentence into its constituent elements, the reduction becomes obvious:

• The system will intake the daily flat file.
• The system will extract and transform each ID into readable formats.
• The system will write the resulting values to the database.

When you organize information, you may need to determine if a list of coordinated elements is the best way to present an idea. The example above can also be an ordinal list if a less-narrative form will better communicate your idea:

To add values to the database, the system will:

1. Intake the daily flat file
2. Extract and transform each ID into readable formats
3. Write the resulting values to the database

Neither format – a sentence with a list of operations or an ordinal list with a leading statement – is better, per se. Each presents the same information in a different way. However, taking one format and restructuring it in a different one takes practice, especially if you want to preserve meaning.

Keeping it Parallel

Regardless of how you format coordinated elements, always check those constituent elements for parallel constructions. Though less of a knowledge management example, the sentence below is similar to ones I have given to students when teaching grammar:

Linus likes traveling, to fly, and enjoy nature.

If you are like me, that sentence probably caused more than a bit of discomfort. The reason: the constructions are completely misaligned! While every activity that Linus  likes is a verb phrase, none of them align:

• “Traveling” is in the present participle form.
• “To fly” is the infinitive form.
• “Enjoy nature” is the second person imperative (command) form.

However, when we rewrite the sentence to stay with one form throughout, it removes any possible confusion that mismatching forms could cause:

Linus likes traveling, flying, and enjoying nature.

While coordination in this form requires parallel construction, coordination does not require that its elements have parallel parts of speech. The next sentence uses a noun phrase (specifically a predicate nominative) and a verb phrase.

Linus is an owl yet loves to surf the web.

The noun phrase (an owl) and the verb phrase (loves to surf the web) do not fall into the same category, but still hold equal importance when we describe our avian friend!

Too Scholarly?

I will be the first to admit that it took a good chunk of reading/researching to refresh my memory on some of these ideas. The more arcane grammar or linguistic topics are often the ones that fall by the wayside. However, while coordination proves to be one of the more academically complex linguistic concepts, you do not need to look too far away to find ways to combine nouns, verbs, adjectives, and different phrases in ways that improve your communication and content. A fundamental command of coordination, what it means, how you can use it, and how you can spot coordination errors that can distract readers adds one more approach to improve your writing.