Kip Powick Posted October 22, 2003 Share Posted October 22, 2003 Starting a sentence with “And” seems to fall into two camps…those that say “no way” and those that say it is OK. Item # 1 is from two well respected writers in the UK. Item # 2 is from an unknown source but I believe the author is American. My conclusion is that I guess no one really cares…except those that sense it is wrong to start a PX with “And”…. And there you have it ITEM 1 It is an archaic formulation: "And did those feet, in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green....etc" Now that the word "and" is used as a conjunction, its archaic use for emphasis has fallen into disuse. If the sentence follows another the use of "And" conveys a continuation of the idea in the previous sentence. As such it suggests that there should not be a separate sentence. It is not correct to start a sentence with the word 'And', a sentence should be understandable on it's own, the prefixing of the word 'And' requires you to know the contents of the previous sentence in order to understand the one that starts with the word 'And'. I have sometimes seen this kind of mistake in American books where anything seems to be correct. ITEM # 2 A-student types who memorized everything their English teachers said insist that coordinating conjunctions cannot begin sentences. If editors ever try to feed you such wrongheadedness, throw these gems their way: "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." (Courtesy, the Old Testament.) "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." (Courtesy, Mark Twain.) "And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it." (Courtesy, Katherine Mansfield). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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