And tonic.Ĭlearly something’s not right there. Still makes sense, right? (I personally think it’s much neater too.) The exception is when a coordinating conjunction is used to connect individual words. Jill laughed so hard she got tears in her gin. That, however, is a matter of style and has nothing to do with grammar. The populist theory is that the two elements that are connected by a coordinating conjunction should be in the same sentence. Now, coordinating conjunctions can be used to link words, phrases and clauses: We are concerned with coordinating conjunctions, the group that and and but belong to. There are three types of conjunctions: coordinating, subordinating and correlative. Might misconceptions of grammar explain our rogue rule’s unstoppable rise? To find out, let’s take a brief look at what conjunctions are all about. That hasn’t stopped people trying to suggest otherwise. In all but the minority of cases, there’s nothing grammatically incorrect about starting a sentence with and or but. What school didn’t teach you about writing for the web But it’s easy to imagine swathes of parents and grandparents recycling the bygone maxim, no doubt while bemoaning the fact that kids “just aren’t taught proper grammar anymore” with all the grim predictability of a James Blunt ballad. Granted, today the ‘rule’ seems to carry less weight than it did back in the day. They would be followed by armchair pedants and fusty old stuck-in-the-muds with a superiority complex who would get a kick out of regurgitating the rule with such gusto that anyone within earshot was terrified into submission. Having been beaten - probably literally - into a generation of schoolchildren, the rule would take on a life of its own: stoically upheld and defended by a generation who were understandably resistant to change. If this is true, it’s not hard to see how the rule would perpetuate. David Crystal, The Story of English in 100 Words While it’s tempting to think that the no-no of starting a sentence with and might pre-date the dinosaurs, legendary linguist David Crystal points his finger to the confines of the school classroom.ĭuring the 19th century, some schoolteachers took against the practice of beginning a sentence with a word like but or and, presumably because they noticed the way young children overused them in their writing.īut instead of gently weaning the children away from overuse, they banned the usage altogether! King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.Īnd God said, Let there be light: and there was light.Īnd God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.Īnd the earth was without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And if The King James Bible is to be believed, even the prophet Moses thought the scriptures of Genesis could be given a little extra oomph by starting sentences with and. If you ever have the misfortune of sharing lunch with any national newspaper editor, they would tell you that introductory conjunctions are perfectly acceptable. That bloke that wrote The Canterbury Tales too. Awesome copywriter Lindsay Camp in his book Can I Change Your Mind? Throughout the history of written English, good writers - virtually without exception - have routinely and unapologetically started sentences with ‘and’. (That’s the name for the class of words that and, but and a number of others fall into.) There isn’t - and never has been - anything wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction. Or something like that.īut here’s the thing. Doing so is an unforgivable affront to the English language. You should never start a sentence with and or but. You’ve heard it before, you’ll hear it again.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |