And So

This came to me as I was working hard editing my novel, preparing it to be the best novel it can be so that one day it can be published. Anyway, as I was editing I came across this sentence.

            Now this is a more mild example of what I’m talking about, but it makes a point. In any case, this wasn’t the first time I came across this in my novel. And after a while, I began to realize I didn’t need both in any of the sentences I used. So let’s go over what these two words are.

            And and so are two of you basic seven conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and are pretty much used to join two phrases together, whether they be dependent clauses or independent clauses. In formal writing, you don’t use these words at the beginning of a sentence, but this is creative writing. Regardless, I’m talking about the use of these words together in the middle of a sentence.

            I realized after a while of editing and my English major brain got to thinking that these two words together is totally wordy. I mean people use them in every day speech without even thinking about it, but they mess up the reading flow of my novel. Why?

            Well, let’s look at the meaning of these two words.

            And is a word that means something along the lines of in addition too, together with etc. So it joins two things that otherwise might not be together and puts them together.

            So works just like it, linking two parts of a sentence together, but it’s kind of used between cause and effect, typically meaning when used as a conjunction (because it can be an adverb) and as a result.

            So that means I need to asks myself this question? Why in the world would I need to put and and so together in one sentence? I either need one or the other if I’m not using so as an adverb?

            As I write this, I realize why it is so important for us writers to have a basic understanding of the most basic grammar rules unless we have the cash to pay someone to do it. We can’t properly edit without it and it’s not the bog stuff like plot holes and misspelled words. Those are pretty obvious, but I don’t think I ever would have understood why that sounded so redundant and silly to me if I didn’t have a basic understanding of conjunctions and was actively reading my novel for flow.

            Anyway, this was just something I noticed as I was editing.