And now, a post about whether you can use 'and' at the start of a sentence.

When I was at school, Our Sacred Lady of the Mean Streets and Correct Grammar, teachers told me that if I used ‘and’ at the start of a sentence, that it was the worst thing I could ever do. This was also the way they felt about using ‘because’ at the start of a sentence.

This was because these words are conjunctions.A conjunction is a word that connects two other words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. For some reason, many teachers used to think that it was a bit unclassy to start a sentence like this, maybe because it makes a sentence look incomplete.

In times like this, I like to turn to The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage book, which says

‘There is a persistent belief that it is improper to begin a sentence with 'and', but this prohibition has been cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo-Saxon times onwards’

Snap, New Fowler’s Modern English. There is pretty much no reason why you can’t use ‘and’ at the start of a sentence. In fact, almost all of the best writers do this whenever they feel like it. Take J.M Coetzee for example:

‘In his youth Dostoevsky had been attracted to utopian socialism of the Fourietrist variety. But four years in a prison camp in Siberia shook his faith.’

Here, you can see that far from being weird and wrong, the conjunction ‘and’ has been a helpful sentence opener.

For any teachers reading this, hey, I know you were just trying to do the right thing. But for all you up-and-coming teachers whose dream it is to create the grammar superstars of tomorrow, just remember that not all clauses have to be complete – a sentence can be dependant on another clause in order to make sense.

To see us out, let’s appreciate this excellent writing from Daphne Du Maurier, as her heroine, an unnamed woman, wanders through the ruins of her old home.

‘And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognise, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.’

Creepy, conjunction-begun stuff!

Capitalisation for titles

As you know, we have once before jumped into the crystal clear waters of how to use capital letters.

But my fans have told me that they are hungry for more information. They have contacted me via twitter, facebook, gmail chat and telegram, begging me to give them more information about how to use capital letters in the right way.

And certainly, capital letters are confusing, not least when you are writing the title of something, such as a memoir you have just written about your life, or a thesis on the mating patterns of salmon, or even a power ballard. Questions you might find yourself asking are "Should my power ballard be written 'The Love Exchange Only Hands Out Monopoly Money', or 'The love exchange only hands out monopoly money', OR should only some of those words be in capitalised?"

Let me explain.

When you are writing titles, some words need to be capitalised, and others don't need to be. The ones that do need to be capitalised are:

•  The first and last words of the title; or
• All nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives

The words that should not be capitalised, unless they are the first or last word, are:

• articles (a, an, the) 
• conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) 
• short adpositions (3 and less letters long): at, by, for, in, of, off, on, out, to, up
• some Latin abbreviations (most common only): c./ca./cca. (circa), et al. (et alii), etc. (et cetera), e.g. (exempli gratia), i.e. (id est), lb. (libra), vs. (versus). 
• medium adpositions (4 letters long): down, from, into, like, near, onto, over, than, with, upon.

For example

That Tall Man, He Runs Fast!

All these words fall into the first category of words that should be capitalised. On the other hand, a title like:

Who's That Man over there?

Would not need to be all capitals because the words in blue are prepositions, which are not to be capitalised.

Some other examples:

Believing the Lie (i.e.first word/article/last word)

Diary of a Whimpy Kid (i.e. first word/short adposition/article/adjective/last word)  

It Was Just a Bit of Fun (i.e first word/verb/adjective/article/noun/adposition/last word)

These Titles Seem to Be Getting Longer and Longer (first word/noun/verb/adposition/verb/verb/adjective/coordinating conjunction/adjective)

But HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE for a minute. You might have noticed that like some sort of hypocritical monstrous dictator of some sort, MC Grammar himself does not follow these rules in his own blog posts. What the fuck? Well, this is where capitalisation for titles gets hazy, because the rules for blog titles are still hazy. For example, the very fine Julie Burchill, a very long-established journalist, only capitalises the first word of her titles, and any proper nouns that come up, whereas the very funny Cody Johnston tends to capitalise everything except coordinating conjunctions. Both are highly respectable journalists and writers, both are well-school in the fine arts of grammar. So who to follow? Well, the best bet is to follow the rules I have set up here, but just remember that the internet is a changing beast, and what rules arise for capitalisations, we simply don't know yet.

To see us out, let's sit back, relax, and listen to the very excellent Capital Letters, who never mess up their capitalisations of titles, and hope that someday you can be like them.