Cassie
October 4, 2007 at 7:06 pm
That is so fantastic! It was so sweet of her to share that with you too (and subsequently, the rest of us).
I have officially returned from my extended blogging hiatus (don’t ask) and I look forward to catching up on what’s been going on at TCC!
Mrs. Chili Archives…here I come!
Reply
2 Comments.
Lara
October 3, 2007 at 3:49 pm
i can honestly say i’ve noticed a serious increase in my tendency to accidentally use homophones in my writing over the last 5ish years. i’m wondering if it doesn’t have something to do with using AIM and other quick forms of communication more often in my life. but whatever the reason, it’s very annoying.
Reply
1 Comment.
saintseester
October 2, 2007 at 7:44 am
Wow! You must be on the quarter system, or some similar variation. Unlike you, I cannot, will not, teach that early in the morning. 8:40? It would kill me. My students would hate me. We’d all be in pissy moods when I was done. 9am is pushing it. I am teaching my earliest at 11 this term. I am just not a morning person.
Reply
16 Comments.
Jangari
September 19, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Again, I’d argue against using terms like ‘incorrect’, even if preposed with ‘technically’. I don’t think it creates a fragment either, as you can take a fully inflected, finite proposition (therefore not a fragment) and add but to the beginning of it.
It’s a discourse marker. It tells the reader that the speaker/writer is making a value judgement toward the previous clause/sentence/proposition. That which follows the but is something that is not ordinarily expected to occur, given the previous proposition.
He is poor but honest
Truth-conditionally speaking, this is equivalent to he is poor and honest , except that the speaker is implying that poor people are ordinarily not honest.
Going back to beginning sentences with it though, there’s clearly nothing wrong with starting a sentence with other synonyms of but , such as however or though , even with phrasal equivalents like on the other hand . Yes, I do know that these are not exact synonyms, because they are not conjunctions like but is a conjunction:
*He is poor on the other hand honest
But they are synonyms in contexts in which but may begin a sentence, as discourse markers.
At the end of the day, sentence-initial-but is not optimal, especially as far as formal writing is concerned, so avoiding it is completely defensible. But it’s certainly acceptable in non-formal registers of language.
Going back to this quote again, here’s another attempt at a transliteration:
However, I have had to forsake teaching my kiddies the nuances of prepositions in lieu of teaching them how to write to a prompt, due to the imperative of the almighty test scores.
Reply