Or ‘but’. Or ‘so’. Or any number of co-ordinating conjunctions that join two sentences. You know what else I want to start a sentence with? ‘Bite me’. Well, to be honest, that’s a complete sentence, but you get my drift.
There is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with any of these
words, including or,
nor, for, so, and yet. It used to drive me batshit when editors went at my
novels with hammer and tongs and started shredding my story, all to satisfy
some mythical ‘rule’ that doesn’t exist.
When we were in primary school the teachers taught us that these words could only join sentences, for example: “You’re ugly, but I totally like you anyway,” or “Roslyn Carrington is the greatest writer of her generation, and damned if she isn’t horrendously underpaid.”
That was their way of teaching you to write complete sentences, and helping you stop writing phrases thinking they were full sentences. In other words, it was like rubbing aloes on your fingertips to stop you from biting your nails.
But, now that we’re all grown up, let’s recognise that we don’t need these training wheels for our sentences anymore. Your sentence will trot happily along if you start it with a conjunction, and the grammar police won’t put you in shackles.
And to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I got to say about that.
Comments? Questions? Leave ‘em below.
