At 6:47 PM -0400 7/25/08, Daniel Brown wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 6:29 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But, there's nothing wrong with starting a sentence with but.
There, I even started AND ended with one.
Correct, as I said, in "Reader's Digest" English. In proper
grammar, it's tantamount to ending a sentence with a preposition[1].
However, even in Reader's Digest English (RDE[TM]), heading a word
with "but" is acceptable.... but following it immediately with a comma
is not[2].
1: Hence the name, "pre-position" --- positioned before.
2: http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article628.pdf
As I see it, this is more of a "When to use a comma" thing than a "but" thing.
I use commas like I talk. For example, I would never say:
But that didn't happen.
Instead, I would say
But -- pause -- that didn't happen.
So, I write it:
But, that didn't happen.
The "But and pause" is used by me to get someone's attention before
presenting my objection.
Now, one can argue if my method is proper or not -- but, I don't
care. The purpose of writing is to communicate and I do that rather
well.
I remember three discussions I had with teachers about writing -- one
teacher in High School told me that no one intelligent would ever
consider anything I had to say because of my obvious limitations.
But, I still graduated from High School.
Another teacher marked me down from an A to a B in my last year in
college because he said that he didn't want me to graduate with
honors for I wasn't the "proper type" of person to represent his
college as an honor student. But, I still graduated with honors.
The last one claimed that my use of commas was excessive in my MS
thesis. But, I still published, defended my thesis, and received my
MS.
So in the end, these were the things I remember being taught by
"English" teachers. They taught me well -- but, nothing about
writing. :-)
Cheers,
tedd
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