If anyone tells you starting sentence with a conjunction is incorrect, hand them any book or well-written news article and have them take a closer look. In literature, journalism, speeches, and formal writing of all kinds, using conjunctions to start sentences is not only acceptable but common. Open any book, and you’ll find countless examples. Here are just a few from great writers through the history of modern English:
But if a man sitting still has not the power to remove himself, he is not at liberty … [John Locke]
And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it. [Jane Austen]
Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity and people without perception. [Ralph Waldo Emerson]
So we had quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins, and he told me all about his life, and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had been. [Virginia Woolf]
And to seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is almost as silly as the more modern scheme of making the scholar a blacksmith … [W.E.B. Du Bois]
But before the captain could answer, a major appeared from behind the guns. [William Faulkner]
And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house. [John F. Kennedy]
Or it might just be that people who are susceptible to mental illness are more prone to think about these sorts of things. [David Foster Wallace]
But the truth is, these steps won’t make up for the seven million jobs that we’ve lost over the last two years. [Barack Obama]
