HBR Guides to Being an Effective Manager Collection (5 Books) (HBR Guide Series)

Appendix B

A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

1. It is perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with And or But.

   The single most important element in fluid writing is the use of effective transitions between sentences and paragraphs. And no transition is more effective than the plain single-syllable words and and but.

   The notion that it’s ungrammatical to start a sentence with a conjunction has long been ignored by the best writers and debunked by reputable grammarians. Look at the op-ed page of any major newspaper or scan through some pages of any well-edited magazine and you’ll see plenty of examples. Why? Because conjunctions are excellent transition tools, signaling how the sentence to follow fits in with what came before—and ...