Los Angeles Times

Column: It’s not true that good sentences can’t start with ‘he,’ ‘she’ or ‘they’

That’s a lesson that, according to a Twitter post, a teacher recently passed on to a child. In context, the lesson seems a little less atrocious: The teacher was talking about the first sentence in a ...
Jewish Journal

Before the Beginning – Thoughts on Torah Portion Bereisheet

The rabbis of the Talmud don’t agree with the beginning sentence of the Torah. The book of Genesis begins, as it is usually translated, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The ...
Los Angeles Times

A Word, Please: Superstitions of the grammatical kind

It seems like just yesterday I was writing a column debunking the myth that it’s wrong to start a sentence with a conjunction. And it seems like just the day before yesterday that I wrote the same ...
Reason

Starting Sentences with "And," "But," or "Or"

I'm writing some material about transitions for the Intensive Editing Workshop I'm teaching at UCLA in January, and it reminded me about the mythical "rule" saying that you can't start sentences with ...
Morning Call PA

So … Why Do People Keep Saying So?

This was part of a reader’s Grammar Police rant that I couldn’t fit into my most recent grammar column. “Why do so many young people (18-34) begin sentences with the word ‘So …?’ This gets to be ...