tedd wrote:
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.
It's arguably more correct in this case to use ellipsis:
But ... I could be wrong :)
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