Slippery
04-10-2008, 06:03 PM
In reviewing my recent piece, Oasis found that I began a lot of sentences with conjunctions, and made this comment.
I tend not to like but, or, and, because, etcetera in the beginning of sentences. Just a thing. Most of the time, you can combine them with the previous statement and still have the same flow, or maybe change them into However, or some other transitional statement.
After looking at my work, I could see what he was talking about, but I wanted to know exactly why the conjunctions were causing trouble, and so I kept searching, and I found this website.
http://www.gerrysch.com/cle/handbook/10_between_among_conjunctions.html
This is the part about conjunctions.
Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with a conjunction ("but" or "and"). But you should be careful how often you do it. And it can certainly be overused. But there is no rule that prohibits this usage. And it sometimes makes your writing flow more naturally. But as this paragraph illustrates, continually beginning sentences with "but" and "and" gets on the reader's nerves.
This person says that it can get annoying, but he still doesn't say exactly why. But looking at this paragraph, I was able to discover it for myself.
When you begin a sentence with a conjunction, it's typically because that sentence is part of the same thought as the previous sentence. When you do this, though, you're creating a pause in the flow of information by putting ". But " in the middle of the thought. If you do this enough, the reader begins to feel a little jolt every time it happens. All you are really doing is making the reader stop when it isn't necessary.
I'm very excited about this, because I feel I've learned something very in-depth and technical about writing, so I wanted to share that with everyone. :)
I tend not to like but, or, and, because, etcetera in the beginning of sentences. Just a thing. Most of the time, you can combine them with the previous statement and still have the same flow, or maybe change them into However, or some other transitional statement.
After looking at my work, I could see what he was talking about, but I wanted to know exactly why the conjunctions were causing trouble, and so I kept searching, and I found this website.
http://www.gerrysch.com/cle/handbook/10_between_among_conjunctions.html
This is the part about conjunctions.
Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with a conjunction ("but" or "and"). But you should be careful how often you do it. And it can certainly be overused. But there is no rule that prohibits this usage. And it sometimes makes your writing flow more naturally. But as this paragraph illustrates, continually beginning sentences with "but" and "and" gets on the reader's nerves.
This person says that it can get annoying, but he still doesn't say exactly why. But looking at this paragraph, I was able to discover it for myself.
When you begin a sentence with a conjunction, it's typically because that sentence is part of the same thought as the previous sentence. When you do this, though, you're creating a pause in the flow of information by putting ". But " in the middle of the thought. If you do this enough, the reader begins to feel a little jolt every time it happens. All you are really doing is making the reader stop when it isn't necessary.
I'm very excited about this, because I feel I've learned something very in-depth and technical about writing, so I wanted to share that with everyone. :)