EFECTOS SOBRE EL PESO CORPORAL

Th is is neither a rule of grammar nor even a widely observed conven-

tion. Yet the myth is hardy: even as late as 2008 I was nearly defenes- trated by a bunch of lawyers for suggesting they occasionally begin sentences with ‘But’ instead of ‘However’ or ‘On the other hand’. It may stem from primary-school teachers who (quite reasonably) seek to persuade children to connect the sentence fragments they tend to write.

Most infl uential authors in the last few hundred years have ignored the myth. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Woll- stonecraft regularly uses ‘But’ and ‘And’ at the start of sentences. Jane Austen occasionally begins sentences with ‘And’, in the sense of ‘Fur- thermore’, and commonly uses ‘But’ in the same position. Here is a

typical example from Mansfi eld Park (1814), where ‘But’ shortens the fi rst sentence and heightens its contrast with the ironic second:

She had two sisters to be benefi ted by her elevation [marriage to a social superior]; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are prett y women to deserve them.

‘But’, like most conjunctions, signals a shift in pace, direction, or viewpoint, as in this modern example from the journalist Libby Purves who, for emphasis, happily begins the fi nal sentence with ‘And’:

Th e children of MPs, royalty, journalists and other moral prodnoses do not need to read underclass horror-stories to fi nd out about the lifestyle problems which adult sexuality infl icts on children. Th ey are familiar with it all: access arrangements, vendett as, embarrassment, lawsuits, confusion, hypocrisy. ‘I believe strenuously,’ says Mrs Nicholson [a British MP], ‘that every child deserves a mother and father’; and so say all of us. But the plain fact is that not every child has them to hand. And in family life, the golden rule is to start from where you are.

Even old-time grammarians began sentences with ‘But’, and if it had been a real rule they wouldn’t have done so. J C Nesfi eld, in his Manual

of English Grammar and Composition (1915) — a 423-page small-print

textbook for Edwardian 14-year-olds — says:

. . . it is convenient for the sake of brevity to say that ‘a conjunction joins words to words, and sentences to sentences’. But this is not enough for the purposes of defi nition.

People sometimes plead that starting with ‘But’ is unbusinesslike, yet there’s nothing so special about business English that the norm for every other kind of writing should be ignored. If, however, you are thwarted by managers who insist on obeying their long-dead school- teachers, you can slyly use ‘Yet’ as an alternative. It will oft en do the job and has the twin merits of simplicity and underuse.

Some people like to extend their ‘But’ ban to ‘So’, ‘Because’, ‘And’,

and ‘However’. Th is is equally absurd. ‘So’ is a great help to slow typists

and makes a crisp alternative to ‘Consequently’, ‘Th erefore’, and ‘As a

result’:

So it would seem that the courts may override the words which the parties have used, in the process of interpreting a writt en contract, despite the power- ful authorities which I have mentioned. (Sir Christopher Staughton, former Lord Justice of Appeal, England and Wales, writing in Clarity 50, pp 24–29)

Seamus Heaney’s fi ne modern translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (1999) begins with the dramatic one-word sentence, ‘So.’, and there are six other sentences starting with ‘So’ in his fi rst eight pages. Hilary Moriarty, in the Daily Telegraph (2004), writes:

I may be a headteacher now, but I am an English teacher to the bone, with an honours degree in English, a master’s in 20th-century English and American literature and more than 30 years in the classroom. So how come I do not recognise a single poem in the selection of eight my son is studying for his rapidly approaching GCSE in English?

It’s also harmless to begin sentences with ‘Because’ as an alternative to ‘As’ and ‘Since’. To write ‘Because we want the project to succeed, we’re willing to work overtime’ is as grammatically sound as ‘We’re willing to work overtime because we want the project to succeed.’ Every teacher knows this, yet many in secondary schools and universities continue to peddle the myth they heard as nine-year-olds. Even an occasional ‘Or’ can be used as a crisp fi rst-word alternative to ‘Alternatively’.

While obedience to myth may produce stale writing, advertisers and journalists sometimes write incomplete sentences in their desire for brevity, for example:

In truth, the British sandwich is now worse than ever. Because both the key elements, the bread and the fi lling, are invariably poor, and their quality is made worse by the methods of production. ( Daily Mail , 2004)

Th e ‘Because’ at the start of the second sentence misleads readers who,

thinking there’ll be a second part, crash unaware into the full stop. Bett er to have omitt ed the fi rst full stop and let the sentence run.

To begin a sentence with ‘And’—in the sense of ‘Furthermore’—is common among journalists and novelists who want its extra dramatic eff ect, yet it remains rare among business writers. Here, Philip Howard

of Th e Times, writing in 2004 about the altered meanings of military

metaphors like ‘putt ing yourself in the fi ring line’, uses ‘And so’ (mean-

ing ‘Th us’) to begin a sentence:

Th e fi rst citation of the phrase comes from our defeat by the Boers at Majuba in 1881: “General Stewart was obliged to put every reserve man into the fi ring line.’’ As rifl es became more accurate, it was no longer necessary or tactically sensible to concentrate your rifl es into a fi ring line. And so our fi ring line has changed from att ackers to targets.

Moriarty, in her piece mentioned above, also includes a sentence start- ing with ‘And’:

Now, key scenes are identifi ed, and it’s horribly likely that, in many classes, those are the only ones that get taught. Pass the exam, blow the literature. And who can wonder if our very best students fi nd it ridiculously easy?

Th e device is not new, even in prose that purples at the edges. Report-

ing the British queen’s coronation in 1953, Th e Times wrote:

And already waiting for her, on every stretch of her way to and from the Abbey, is the homage of which fl ag and symbol and fl ower are no more than an expression – the love and loyal service of her people.

In his acclaimed biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1989), Rich- ard Holmes regularly begins sentences and paragraphs with ‘And’, ‘But’, and ‘Because’. If it were bad English, the critics would have slaughtered him. When so many able writers disregard these myths, the best advice is that you may start a sentence with any word you want, as long as it

hangs together as a complete statement. Th e Times even wrote an edi-

torial about it:

But of course you can start an editorial with a “but”. But us no buts. Th e Bible is full of the usage. But the taboo against it is a lingering superstition, dreamed up by prescriptive Victorian grammarians who tried to make English run on railway lines instead of an open road.