Coordinating Conjunctions join words of the same part of speech together, for example:
Jason and Josh protest that their English teacher is capricious.
Jason or Josh disgraced their English teacher when they hung the dedicated instructor in effigy.
Strangely, Jason nor Josh were ever seen again.
There are seven coordinating conjunctions which are easy to remember if you recall the acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). When evaluating sentence types coordinating conjunctions act as invisible words in that they are not included when determining whether the clause is independent while subordinating conjunctions are visible; they must be included with the subordinating clause that they introduce.
Example:
Jason’s English notebook washed up on the shore, but Josh’s notebook was never recovered. (This sentence is compound; it has two independent clauses because they are joined by the coordinating conjunction but).
Jason’s English notebook washed up on the shore, while Josh’s notebook was never recovered. (This sentence is complex; it has an independent clause joined by a subordinate clause because the subordinating conjunction while cannot be overlooked).