Can you start a sentence with "and"?
With some regularity, I receive proofs of texts I have written where someone points out that you must not start a sentence with "and". I have not been able to find any common denominator for these people - they are both young and old. The notion of not starting a sentence with "and" seems to be incredibly widespread and crosses all age lines. But given that the rule never existed, one wonders why it is so widespread and so strongly held.
Unclear why you cannot start a sentence with "and"
Many people testify that they were taught that you must not start a sentence with "and" or "but". Several of these were educated in Swedish schools in the 40s and 50s, but even students who, like me, made it through the 70s Lgr 69 elementary school tell of being taught that "and" at the beginning of the sentence is totally taboo.
Since I can't for the life of me understand why you can't start a sentence with "and", I decided to try and find out where this "rule" comes from. However, after doing a lot of research, I haven't actually been able to find any evidence that it ever existed in a formal sense.
It seems to have originated with a number of grim primary school teachers of Swedish who, over the centuries, have instilled in children this completely erroneous notion through misguided educational zeal. And these kids have since grown up and kept this pleasantly uncomplicated rule as a guiding principle in their lives, even when everything else they held to be true eroded in the face of the unstable reality of adult life.
The rule that is an exception
Lars-Gunnar Andersson, professor of modern Swedish at the University of Gothenburg, who for many years was a side-kick on the radio program Språket i P1, raises this theory in Göteborgs Posten 2015:
"So how come we have learned this rule? Where does it come from?
Yes, most likely from the world of school. Once, when we wrote our first essays, we had to tell a story. The topic could be "My summer vacation" or "A day I remember".
The usual narrative pattern is: "and so we did it ... and so ... and so ... and so the summer was over". Of course, the teacher says that we shouldn't start every sentence with "and" or, why not, no sentences should start with "and". If the rule is pedagogically justified in primary school, surely a disclaimer should be issued later in the school years. Few people remember any such thing."
No, a denial has never been issued. So it is probably high time to do so now.
Of course you can start a sentence with "and"!
Finding evidence that it's okay to start a sentence with "and" is infinitely easier. The Institute for Language and Folklore in Uppsala is also responsible for the Språkrådet, the agency's language care unit in Stockholm, which mainly focuses on language advice, lectures, publishing language books and language policy. They have, of course, taken up this burning issue and describe what is involved:
'[One can] begin a sentence with "and" when it adds to the information in the preceding sentence or sentences. Especially when the sentence is the last part of a list or expresses a kind of summary, an introductory 'and' can be particularly emphatic: 'The office has been closed on Fridays. Inquiries from the public have gone unanswered since last year. No new information has been posted on the website since February. And that's just the face-to-face grievances anyway.' But sentence-initiating 'but' and 'and' should be rationed. Several sentence-initiating 'and' or 'but' one after the other give a showy impression."
To prove once and for all that starting sentences with "and" is not only permissible, but also in many ways common - and sometimes stylistically desirable - I thought I'd conclude with some quotes from famous literary works.
Simply do as God does
Many people use the Bible to guide their life choices, and it turns out that it is also a good tool for making language choices. In fact, the first chapter of Genesis, "God creates the world", which describes how God created the Earth, contains 12 sentences beginning with "and". Here are the first few paragraphs:
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was desolate and empty, the deep was covered with darkness, and a divine wind swept over the waters. God said, "Let there be light!" And the light was created. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. It became evening and it became morning. That was the first day.
God said, "In the water there shall be a firmament, and it shall divide the water from the water." And so it was. God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above the vault. God called the vault heaven. It became evening and it became morning. It was the second day."
Or why not August Strindberg?
August Strindberg may not have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he is one of the most innovative and well-known writers and playwrights of modern times. He had no problem starting sentences with "and" and was a true equilibrist when it came to the use of the semicolon, that ingenious punctuation mark - a cross between a colon and a comma that lends any text an air of thoughtful intellectual finesse.
Here is a quote, the introduction to the novel "Red Room":
"But the sun stood over Liljeholmen and shot whole brooms of rays towards the east; they went through the smokers from Bergsund, they rushed across Riddarfjärden, climbed up to the cross on Riddarholmskyrkan, threw themselves over to the steep roof of the German, played with the pennants on the ship's bridge boats, illuminated in the windows of the large Sjötullen, lightened the Lidingö forests and faded away in a rose-colored cloud, far, far out in the distance, where the sea lies. And from there the wind came, and she made the same journey back through Vaxholm, past the fortress, past Sjötullen, along Siklaön, went in behind Hästholmen and looked at the summer pleasures; out again, continued and came into Danviken, was frightened and rushed off along the southern shore, smelled coal, tar and wood, tumbled towards Stadsgården, went up Mosebacke, into the garden and hit a wall."
If not, let Selma Lagerlöf convince you
But if you must have a Nobel Prize winner to feel confident in your use of "and" to start a sentence, let's check with Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to have the (now relatively) honorable opportunity to occupy a chair in the Swedish Academy. Here is an example from her novel "Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey through Sweden":
"Father complained that he was slow and lazy: he hadn't wanted to learn anything at school, and he was so useless that he could barely be made to herd geese. And mother did not deny that this was true, but she was most grieved that he was wild and mean, hard on animals and spiteful to men. "May God break his wickedness and give him another mind!" Mother said. "Otherwise he will be a misfortune both to himself and to us."
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