Bill Situ
English and ESL Instructor
In English, conjunctions are basically words that that serve as connectors between clauses. Examples of these include "and", "so", "but", "or", and "because". Since these words join clauses together, it is not proper to start sentences using these words:
Incorrect: I am a student. And my favourite subject is English.
In a previous post that I wrote about comma faults, I talked about independent and dependent clauses. Whenever there is a conjunction at the beginning of a clause, the clause is always a dependent one. Notice that the second sentence beginning with "and" is a dependent clause, so it cannot actually stand alone as a sentence.
If we were to fix the example above, we would use a comma instead of a period.
Correct: I am a student, and my favourite subject is English.
Here is one more example:
Incorrect: Jack is of Chinese descent. But he does not understand Chinese.
Correct: Jack is of Chinese descent, but he does not understand Chinese.
Incorrect: I am a student. And my favourite subject is English.
In a previous post that I wrote about comma faults, I talked about independent and dependent clauses. Whenever there is a conjunction at the beginning of a clause, the clause is always a dependent one. Notice that the second sentence beginning with "and" is a dependent clause, so it cannot actually stand alone as a sentence.
If we were to fix the example above, we would use a comma instead of a period.
Correct: I am a student, and my favourite subject is English.
Here is one more example:
Incorrect: Jack is of Chinese descent. But he does not understand Chinese.
Correct: Jack is of Chinese descent, but he does not understand Chinese.
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