Thursday Tip: Starting sentences with and's, but's, or or's

The last few Tips showed you how to play with series and the conjunctions that link their elements. This week’s talks about starting a sentence with and, but, or or. For those of you aghast at flouting the dictates of your seventh-grade English teacher, it’s time to overcome that fear and at least consider this addition to your style.

Starting a sentence with a conjunction was common in 1776 (see Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations). It was also common in the early 1950s. Just look at any high school text from that era (trust me). It’s now back in vogue. Consider this example from The Economist’s “Desperate Measures”:

The deepening gloom about the economy may well warrant such an aggressive response. But the timing is puzzling. There is more than a whiff of panic about slashing rates little more than a week before a scheduled meeting.

The opening but preserves the link between the first two sentences—and emphasizes the change of direction. It’s more effective than the alternatives: combining the parts into a compound sentence joined by a comma (not enough punch), eliminating the but and keeping two independent sentences (the logic is lost), or joining the parts with however, placed at the beginning of the second sentence or in the middle (again, not enough punch).

The opening and has much the same effect. Here’s an example from Michael Grynbaum’s “Stocks Surge” in the New York Times:

The volatility on Wall Street came with the market at a 15-month low. And it followed another steep sell-off in European stock markets, which were disappointed after the head of the European Central Bank dampened investors’ hopes that the bank would follow the Fed’s lead in cutting interest rates.

As a single sentence, this could have been a blur, especially with the length of the sentence. The opening and makes the parts easier to grasp.

A nice rhetorical flourish is to combine an opening and and a but. Consider The Economist’s “Israel and Gaza: Scrapping for Power”:

Since Hamas took over Gaza, Israel’s only hope is that its talks on a Palestinian state with Hamas’s rival, Fatah, which controls the West Bank, will eventually give Gaza’s residents the impetus to rise up and, if not overthrow Hamas, at least put pressure on it to make concessions. But the more Gaza suffers, the harder it is for Fatah’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to carry on those talks. And if, in the oft-discussed nightmare scenario, a Qassam hits a busy Israeli school playground, Israel’s politicians may well feel they have no choice but to launch a retribution that risks destroying the peace process.

With all the commas and clauses, this passage could be a slog for readers. The opening but and and signal the logic and flow.

But remember our standard disclaimer: use these flourishes too often and you’ll annoy your readers.