FANBOYS are hard!

Question

Greetings. I have a sentence in my narrative that I am unsure about. The sentence is: "I've been transported into my favorite fictional universe, but at what cost?" . "At what cost" is not an independent clause, so, if I know my FANBOYS, the comma shouldn't be there. However, the sentence looks very incorrect without it: "I've been transported into my favorite fictional universe but at what cost?". Can you assist me in this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

One possible explanation is that, In this sentence, the word but is acting as a conjunction because the rest of the sentence is understood to be "but at what cost was I transported?"

Great job on your knowledge of conjunctions and commas!