“Never begin a sentence with and,” my college freshmen have been told. This is another one of those rules that somebody must have dreamed up in a rage of vengeance: a schoolmaster named Ichabod, disappointed in love, glowering down on his young charges, and thinking, “Yes, I shall make their lives miserable!
I am opening my Bible to the New Testament, at random. I read: “And he said unto his disciples, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.” I read: “And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?” I read: “And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” If it is good enough for Almighty God, it had better be good enough for a dusty old English teacher.
The fact is, English stylists have always begun sentences with and. Bede the Venerable did it in the eighth century. Chaucer did it in the fourteenth. Shakespeare did it in the sixteenth. Milton did it in the seventeenth, Swift did it in the eighteenth, Twain did it in the nineteenth, and Hemingway did it in the twentieth. Every single great English writer without exception has begun sentences with and, and plenty, too. It is the easy way to connect, loosely, one sentence with another. It’s swifter than the pedantic in addition, comma, or furthermore, comma, or comma, moreover, comma. The Greeks began their sentences with their kai, the Hebrews began their sentences with their w’, and the Romans began their sentences with their atque. It’s natural. You can overdo it, of course. But then, you can begin too many sentences with notwithstanding or inasmuch as. As, for instance, two.
January 20th, 2013 | 1:23 pm
From the movie “Finding Forrester.” i always loved this exchange. Seems on point.
Forrester: Paragraph three starts…with a conjunction, “and.” You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.
Jamal: Sure you can.
Forrester: No, it’s a firm rule.
Jamal: No, it was a firm rule. Sometimes using a conjunction at the start of a sentence makes it stand out. And that may be what the writer’s trying to do.
Forrester: And what is the risk?
Jamal: Well the risk is doing it too much. It’s a distraction. And it could give your piece a run-on feeling. But for the most part, the rule on using “and” or “but” at the start of a sentence is pretty shaky. Even though it’s still taught by too many professors. Some of the best writers have ignored that rule for years, including you.
January 20th, 2013 | 4:46 pm
All I can say is: And why not?
January 21st, 2013 | 9:56 am
Off the main point, but I think notwithstanding is one of the most wonderful words in the English language. It’s best used sparingly — twice in a decade is probably the right limit for a fairly prolific professional writer. But there’s just a strange beauty in that word.
January 21st, 2013 | 11:48 am
One of the rules of gramatical rules is that they are for amateurs. Professional rhetoricians know when to keep them and when to break them.
January 22nd, 2013 | 4:52 am
“And” by definition is a conjunction. Logically, the role of a conjunction is to connect two parts. When one starts a sentence with a conjunction one is effectively trying connect it to a previous sentence or concept. When the “and” provides the connective role in a new sentence, there is more likely an error in punctuation which separates the two sections of the compound sentence with a perriod rather than connecting them with a comma. When the concept expressed in the new sentence is too distinct from that of the preceeding sentence to qualify for a compound structure, the errant “and” is more nearly serving the purpose of an interjection or something of the nature of “so”, “hence”, “anyway”, or “well”. It is what it does. If it doesn’t conjunct, it’s not a conjunction.
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