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Does one use a comma when beginning a sentence with a conjunction?

Woollybear

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Suggestion number 10 at this link says that there is no comma after And, But, Or, etc when they begin sentences.

But, I am not certain if this is accurate. (If I use the word However, instead of But, I believe it requires a comma.)

And, I believe the folks here will know. (If I use the word Additionally, instead of And, I believe it requires a comma.)

Or maybe I should take the blog at face value.

Comma or no comma in these instances? I think Word sometimes tells me to place a comma after such words, but it is not a hard-and-fast flag.
 
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nickj47

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No comma there for me, and I probably use more commas than most.
 

Woollybear

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I will search and destroy them, then. I'm curious how many I have.

(thirteen commas for those three conjunctions, out of 7800 commas total.)
 
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cornflake

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One does not begin a sentence with a conjunction.
 

MS KIKI

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But you can if that's your style. And ditch the comma. ;)
 

Davy The First

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Might be possible in inflected speech/ speech, but otherwise, nope.

Mary continued - "and, like, she was so - OMG! You know?"

God, I love teen speech.
 
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BethS

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Comma or no comma in these instances?

No comma. In fact, you never put a comma after a conjunction unless you're inserting a phrase set off by commas on either end, as if it were a parenthetical phrase. And unless it's a long phrase, you probably don't need them even then.
 

Woollybear

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One does not begin a sentence with a conjunction.


Apparently authors do. Sticking to correct grammar (including eschewing all fragments) is evidently why my writing lacks good 'voice.' Open any book you have recently bought to any page and I bet you will find an example.


Patty tests hypothesis:

Page 164, Gunpowder Moon. And Cole.
Page 87, The Couple Next Door. But the exhaustion ...
Page 248, Planetside. But they learned. (Full disclosure I had to flip twice in this book to find an example.)

And indeed, none have commas after the conjunction. I'm having a hey-day editing fragments and all sorts of mistakes into my draft. We'll see if that bumps up the request rate. If not, I'll play with naughty words. I have a suspicion those are important, ha!
 
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Toto Too

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Yeah, I thought that was an outdated rule to not begin sentences with a conjunction. I'm certainly not the expert, but I'm using them with reckless abandon. And never with commas! Although I use commas at an absolute minimum in general. To me they just make the prose choppy. Unless required or you want the reader to pause, just get on with it.

But for sentences starting with conjunctions, I make exceptions based on desired emphasis. For example, I would write:


He really wanted to go hiking today, so he gathered his boots, maps, and backpack. But it was raining.


But I might also write:


He really wanted to go hiking today. But, this was destined to be the absolute worst day of his entire life.



ETA I realize I said that I use commas at an absolute minimum, only to throw a serial comma into the first example. I do believe in serial commas. :flag:
 
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MS KIKI

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I usually write in the first person. And beginning a sentence with a conjunction often works for me. ;)
 

Lakey

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One does not begin a sentence with a conjunction.

This is so dryly delivered that I can’t tell if you’re joking, but just in case - of course one does, if one wishes to. Any supposed rule to the contrary is not borne out in the corpus of many fine writers of English, and hasn’t been for many centuries. See, for instance, here, here, and here for some discussion.
 
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nickj47

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Yeah, I thought that was an outdated rule to not begin sentences with a conjunction.
I don't think it's outdated, but it is just a rule. I used to get asked when you could break certain rules, and my answer was always the same: when you know what you're doing. Rules don't apply equally to everyone. A rule for a five-year-old might be don't run into the street. Absolute rule, never violated. But it doesn't apply to adults who (hopefully) know what they're doing. Rules get you started, keep you safe while you're learning.
 

Bajungadustin

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One does not begin a sentence with a conjunction.

Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Jack London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hans Christian Anderson, Henrey James, and J.R.R. Tolkien
Would strongly disagree.

Across all of his works, Tolkien started sentences with But, And, For, So, Yet, Or, and Nor a total of 6320 times.
 

Bajungadustin

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I don't think it's outdated, but it is just a rule. I used to get asked when you could break certain rules, and my answer was always the same: when you know what you're doing. Rules don't apply equally to everyone. A rule for a five-year-old might be don't run into the street. Absolute rule, never violated. But it doesn't apply to adults who (hopefully) know what they're doing. Rules get you started, keep you safe while you're learning.

I think we should move to calling it a guideline more than a rule. One should not use the conjunctions as the start of a sentence without purpose. They especially shouldn't get in the habit of it lest it becomes distracting to the reader.
 

Bufty

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Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Jack London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hans Christian Anderson, Henrey James, and J.R.R. Tolkien
Would strongly disagree.

Across all of his works, Tolkien started sentences with But, And, For, So, Yet, Or, and Nor a total of 6320 times.

Are you the same fellow who is asking for advice on tags and basic dialogue punctuation? :Hug2:
 

blacbird

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I don't know about that person named "One", but I sometimes do, depending on context and intent of sentence.

And, because I'm not totally hidebound by academic grammatical "rules" in my fiction writing, I do the same with "but".

And that's the truth, which demonstrates how I use conjunctions at the beginning of sentences. Basically, if you have a clause that requires comma separation in any other context, it should be done in this context as well. If you don't follow the conjunction with such a clause, you don't need a comma.

caw