| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
|
1. Grammar: Traditional Rules, Word Order, Agreement, and Case
|
| § 17. but |
| but beginning a sentence. “In his youth Dostoevsky had been attracted to utopian socialism of the Fourierist variety. But four years in a prison camp in Siberia shook his faith.” As this quotation from J.M. Coetzee shows, the conjunction but can be highly effective as a sentence opener. You may still hear the injunction against beginning a sentence with a conjunction. The idea is that these sentences express “incomplete” thoughts. But a glance through any magazine or newspaper will show you that beginning with but has become common practice, and initial but must be considered acceptable at all levels of style. | 1 |
| but not followed by a comma. But is generally not followed by a comma. Correct written style requires Kim wanted to go, but we stayed, not Kim wanted to go, but, we stayed. | 2 |
| but however. For a discussion of this word combination, see
redundancy under Style. | 3 |
| More at
and, cannot, however and pronouns, personal. | 4 |
|
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
|
|
