Also, check the back seat

Updated 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Source: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/

Reader FW asked for some advice about a nanowrimo discussion of "Ands and buts", which started Nov. 3 with this question:

So this is one that always get [sic] me.

Grammatically speaking, or however it is known, can you use Ands and Buts at the beginning of sentences? And can you use it at the start of dialogue as well?

A participant using the name pointytilly links to Paul Brians' list of "non-errors" in defense of the view that sentence-initial and and but are "grammatically ...

correct". And indeed they are, according to essentially everyone with any plausible claim to expertise, prescriptivists and descriptivists alike.

As Arnold Zwicky wrote ("However,…" 11/1/2006):

Mark notes that the AHD [American Heritage Dictionary] note for and rejects NIC ["No Initial Coordinators"] out of hand, and he provides a smorgasbord of cites (and statistics) from reputable authors. Similarly MWDEU [Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage]. Paul Brians, collector of common errors in English, labels sentence-initial coordinators a "non-error". Bryan Garner denies, all over the place, that NIC has any validity. Even the curmudgeonly Robert Hartwell Fiske tells his readers that there's absolutely nothing wrong with sentence-initial coordinators. A point of usage and style on which Liberman and I and the AHD and the MWDEU stand together with Brians and Garner and Fiske (and dozens of other advice writers) is, truly, not a disputed point. NIC is crap.

But still it lives on, as what I've called a zombie rule. It's been lurking in the grammatical shadows for some time — at least a hundred years, to judge from MWDEU. Hardly any usage manual subscribes to it, but it is, apparently, widely taught in schools, at least in the U.S., with the result that educated people tend to be nagged by a feeling that there is something bad about sentence-initial and (and but and so). (It might well be that this sense of unease rises with level of education. Someone should look at this possibility.)

Back on nanowrimo, Tom L Waters contributed this interesting counter-argument:

Allow me a quibble, pointytilly. The site you link to (which I am a fan of, by the way) is concerned with usage standards, not grammar. They are related but not identical. Grammar deals with categories such as parts of speech, and the logical rules of syntax for constructing sentences. Grammatically, conjunctions link words, phrases, or clauses. So from a grammatical standpoint, a sentence beginning with a conjunction is a fragment, and hence ungrammatical.

For many decades, grammar per se has become less and less relevant. From a linguistic standpoint, the rules of grammar are not adequate to the task of describing how language is actually used. Talking about acceptable usage rather than grammatical correctness avoids some of the problems created by grammar's emphasis on categories and rules, and recognizes the subtleties and complexities of natural languages.

Nevertheless, the rules of grammar remain one way that readers will evaluate the "correctness" of a piece of writing, so it's helpful to understand when grammatical rules are being broken, even if the usage in question is otherwise acceptable.

But if the "grammatical" definition of conjunction included sentences among the things to be linked, then sentence-initial conjunctions would be "grammatical", right? Well, the relevant definition in the OED is: "One of the Parts of Speech; an uninflected word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to co-ordinate words in the same clause." Merriam-Webster's definition is "an uninflected linguistic form that joins together sentences, clauses, phrases, or words".

Mr. Waters adds:

Although beginning a sentence with a conjunction is acceptable in fiction (there is wide agreement on this), it is not acceptable in technical, academic, or formal writing.

In dealing with someone who exhibits this level of zombie-like persistence, despite lists of devastating counter-examples from the most authoritative sources of formal writing, in the face of rational counter-arguments from every available grammatical authority, it's clear that the expertise that FW needs is not linguistic. She should turn instead to Columbus's list of rules for surviving in a zombie-infested world, and perhaps especially #22, "When in doubt, know your way out".

And a little sunscreen never hurt anybody.

36 comments on this story

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soquoted 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Twitter

"dealing with someone who exhibits this level of zombie-like persistence, despite lists of devastating counter-examples" http://bit.ly/a1UpG

Richard Thomas 3 months ago on Wordpress

In response to Dan T, the normal rule is that each legislative unit contains one sentence. That sentence may be a general rule, with any exceptions set out afterwards. For example, one of the provisions that Rob Marris refers to reads

(2) The amendment made by sub-paragraph (1) has effect in relation to accounting periods ending on or after 6th March 2007.

(3) But income which arises ... See all content Hide content

Jair 3 months ago on Wordpress

I’m pretty sure that if LL blogs about that topic they will be required to make the subject line a certain very obvious pun.

Daniel Smith 3 months ago on Wordpress

I don't see a good email address to make a suggestion, so I'm hijacking this comment thread to give an idea for a future post: I've been told I use too many "to be" verbs in my writing. Do good writers really avoid "to be" verbs, or is this like some of the other proscriptions you guys like to bash on here?

Thanks!

Ken Brown 3 months ago on Wordpress

"I wonder whether Blake used "and" in And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England’s mountains green: in the way "et" is used in Et in Arcadia ego or Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes — to indicate the idea of "even." Jesus may have even walked in England."

I don't think so. Blake is referring to the Joseph of Arimathea/Glastonbury legend but he is not suggesting it is historical fact ... See all content Hide content

Paul 3 months ago on Wordpress

Just had a piece of writing peer-reviewed by a linguist who complained about an "incomplete sentence" in my text. I looked to see what it was. And it was an example of NIC. :-(

Dan T. 3 months ago on Wordpress

What's the context in the British finance bill that causes so many paragraphs to start with "But"? What are they conjoined to in this case?

Nick Lamb 3 months ago on Wordpress

I'd assumed that Blake intends this poem to work fine without the prior paragraph. If it's OK to begin a story in the middle (audiences seem to take this in their stride) then it's no problem to leave mention of which feet we're talking about for a few lines. As lyrics for a pop song I think a similar construction would go unremarked

And now, the end is here

And so I face the final ... See all content Hide content

Dan Lufkin 3 months ago on Wordpress

@ Philip Taylor — In Latin, Italian, Dutch (& Afrikaans), French and Spanish, at least, the or … or … construction is the standard way of saying "whether … or …" "Whether (we) lost or won," in your song. (It don't make no never-mind.)

And (harking back to myl's note) a leading Et … et … was (and still is) the standard Latin way of saying "Both ... See all content Hide content

Liz 3 months ago on Wordpress

"nice to see that the "students need our insane rules" argument so early in the thread."

Is this a common and easily sneered at position then? I'd love to be directed to other instances.

[(myl) Two common variants of this argument have been given convenient acronyms by Arnold Zwicky: Zero Tolerance 1 (ZT-1) "If they do it too much, they should be told not to do it at all", and Zero ... See all content Hide content

Philip TAYLOR 3 months ago on Wordpress

I have just remembered that my school song also had a verse that commenced with a conjunction (or perhaps I should say, disjunction) :

Or lost, or won,

The games we play

Will stir our hearts

For many a day.

Then gather ye sons of Colfe around (etc.).

cadeira 3 months ago on Twitter

RT @gyokusai And this is why initial coordinators are grammatical http://u.nu/8zrs3 I ♥ it. Also check last § on grammar zombie infestations

John Cowan 3 months ago on Wordpress

In addition, Blake needed an unstressed syllable at the start of the Jerusalem hymn, and "And" would do as well as any.

Dan Lufkin 3 months ago on Wordpress

I wonder whether Blake used "and" in And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England’s mountains green: in the way "et" is used in Et in Arcadia ego or Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes — to indicate the idea of "even." Jesus may have even walked in England.

I was once gonna write "Timmy O'Donohue + Donna Ferentes" in a heart on a wall in Harvard Yard, but decided it would be a waste of chalk. ... See all content Hide content

Matthew Kehrt 3 months ago on Wordpress

I find the use of sentence-initial "and" to be stylistically disconcerting. However, since joining academia, I have become aware of the glorious word "moreover", which completely solves this problem (and which tends to be extremely overused in computer science academic writing).

Chris Waigl 3 months ago on Wordpress

Virginia Woolf's "A room of one's own" starts with "but", and has three sentence-initial "but"s in the first paragraph, used effectively in my opinion.

(This passage, and specifically the initial "but", are used as an example in one of the textbooks, used by me in 2002, for analyse grammaticale et linguistique portion (the exact title varies) of the French CAPES/Agrégation exams for English ... See all content Hide content

Simon Cauchi 3 months ago on Wordpress

Having just listened to Agathe's lovely cavatina "Und ob die Wolke" from Der Freischütz, sung beautifully on YouTube by the late Elizabeth Parcells, I'm sceptical of any Latin influence on Blake's initial "And" in "Jerusalem".

John Cowan 3 months ago on Wordpress

Rob Marris gets the thing right, but he under-generalizes. He should be saying "I am aware that many journalists, professors, authors of great literature, and plumbers use it; it [sic; that?] does not make it right." In other words, some people believe that the "grammar rules" they exhort others to obey are truly from Mt. Sinai (though they would repudiate the connection).

Philip TAYLOR 3 months ago on Wordpress

(So) what is the function of Blake's leading "And" at the commencement of "Jerusalem" :

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

I am more than happy to accept that a conjunction may be used to link two sentences, and thus that any sentence apart from the first may therefore commence with such a conjunction, but to what does a conjunction such ... See all content Hide content

Tom 3 months ago on Wordpress

For the record, Heaney follows his "So" with a full stop:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by

and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.

I'd be curious to hear from any Anglo-Saxonists how literally that renders the original. (In Heaney's facing-page edition, there's no punctuation after the "Hwaet," but I've no idea what old-English punctuation conventions are ... See all content Hide content

thebobster 3 months ago on Twitter

So I often break the "NIC" rule. And I'm glad to see that it's bogus. http://tinyurl.com/yz2nabj thanks @thatwhichmatter

Layra 3 months ago on Wordpress

With regards to the use of sentence-initial coordinators and education, when I was in university, I and several friends noted a prevalence of starting sentences, even conversations, with "So". Instead of going up to someone and saying, "I had an idea…", the phrasing would be "So I had an idea…", "So I was talking to this guy the other day…" and so on.

Our theory was that ... See all content Hide content

sabinehunsicker 3 months ago on Twitter

NaNoWriMo on the Language Log? Worlds colliding, I think. http://tinyurl.com/yz2nabj

FW 3 months ago on Wordpress

'Although' is a subordinating conjunction - I think Tom L Waters's beef is with coordinators, TB.

Thanks, Mark!

Zoe Larivelt 3 months ago on Wordpress

Obviously it's a question of orthography, not grammar at all, since the supposed mistake can usually be fixed with a little repunctuation, without changing a word. "Grammatically incorrect" is just one of those things one says when something seems wrong, but it's too much trouble to figure out what.

I wonder if the original proscription was simply against sentence fragments being allowed to ... See all content Hide content

languagelog 3 months ago on Twitter

Also, check the back seat: Reader FW asked for some advice about a nanowrimo discussion of "Ands and buts", which st... http://bit.ly/3xevoX

TB 3 months ago on Wordpress

Or should I say "can be a conjunction"? I have a feeling I'm about to get schooled.

TB 3 months ago on Wordpress

I love these self-refuting rules. I suppose Mr. Waters doesn't realize that "although" is a conjunction.

Also nice to see that the "students need our insane rules" argument so early in the thread.

Liz 3 months ago on Wordpress

Oh, and the people who write the grammar books are often the same people, or from the same camp, as those who set or mark test papers.

Karen 3 months ago on Wordpress

"They were probably told at some stage not to start sentences with And, and they see it used all the time, and do not have the skills to figure out when it works and when it doesn't. (I'm not a sophisticated linguist either. Would that last sentence be better with a full stop before each and? On what grounds?)"

Better how? I certainly wouldn't write it with a full stop before the "and", especially ... See all content Hide content

Rachel Cotterill 3 months ago on Wordpress

We were taught this at school; I think everyone is! Along with how to use an apostrophe, that's pretty much the only 'grammar' lesson that I can remember from compulsory education… but I ignore it.

Liz 3 months ago on Wordpress

Well, yes. But it does depend on whether you are teaching zombie rules because you believe they are true and unbreakable or because you are desperate to help people who have never been taught anything much that makes sense to write a letter that might actually help them get a job. I teach adult drop-outs from the education system who have been marginalised for years. Concepts like clause, phrase and ... See all content Hide content

T. A. Smith 3 months ago on Wordpress

To prove your point: For about seventy years, I was painfully uneasy about writing a sentence that began with "And" or "But" or that ended with a preposition. The result: (estimate) 17,050 sentences that made sense but were embarrassingly awkward. But, being a slow learner (better than being a non-learner, I suppose), it was not until I reached seventy-five that I overcame my unease and practiced what ... See all content Hide content

gyokusai 3 months ago on Twitter

And this is why initial coordinators are grammatical http://u.nu/8zrs3 I ♥ Language Log! Also check last §§ on grammar zombie infestations.

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