A client called me not long ago rather upset. She said that she had found several errors in the manuscript I had edited and returned. To err is human they say, and even the best editors and proofreaders can overlook something. The eye can deceive, especially when you are tired and especially when you have been working closely on one document for a long period of time. The natural tendency, professional proofreaders tell us, is to see what we logically expect to see in the texteven if it isn't really there. Often periods go AWOL at the end of sentences for this very reason. It's a classic example of how the brain "fills in the blanks" for our eyes.

Anxious and worried, because I am normally very diligent, I asked her to indicate the errors to me and I would review and correct. And so I come to the second popular myth about proper grammar usage: you cannot start a sentence with because.

The novice writer had a penchant for very, very long sentences that were syntactically incorrect. The stream-of-consciousness technique may sound easyjust write as you think or speakbut only the most accomplished writers can pull it off really well. I had chopped some of her sentences down to sizewhere appropriateand that created a few new ones that started with because and a few more that started with but. Because she had been told in grade school that it was wrong to begin a sentence with because, these new sentences were perceived as errors.

In the previous articlePart 1we looked at a popularly held belief that sentences should not begin with conjunctions such as and or but. Opinions about English usage with no real basis in grammar that have been perpetuated over time are known as non-errors. The notion that we cannot begin our sentences with conjunctions is a non-error. The word because fell prey to this mythology too, and style guides and well-meaning teachers have been rapping our knuckles over this one for ages.

With apologies to those first intrepid writers and compilers of English grammar who were probably trying to align English with Latin, long considered the benchmark for syntactical elegance and logic, it isand always has beenperfectly correct to begin a sentence with because.

Let's take a closer look.

Because is a subordinating conjunction and its function in a sentence is to begin a subordinate or dependent clause. This simply means that as long as you have a clause in the latter half of your sentence that will provide the explanation of what you stated, you are fine. In reality, you are just inverting the order of the sentence: Because online articles are often hard to read, it is wiser to choose fonts that display easily in any browser. Normally, the sentence would begin with the main clause. Either way, the meaning is the same.

Even without an explanatory clause, because statements such as these are now commonly used: Because you can. Because we care. Because we know where you live. Copywriters, journalists and writers of fiction will regularly employ this technique whenever and wherever casual, natural speech is emulated or reproduced for realism or for impact. And this is all perfectly legitimate.

Let context be your guide.

I would not advocate this type of writing in formal business communications, or if you are writing the cover letter for a job application. When writing creatively, however, don't allow myth-guided rules about what can or cannot be done in English constrain you.

Actually, one of the worst "errors" in English is the run-on sentence. There is nothing worse than a rambling sentence that digresses into meaninglessness because the writer ignored syntax and punctuation, which function as the road map and the traffic lights of language. So if the sentence you are writing is becoming unwieldy, and there's a because on the horizon, feel free to cut your lengthy sentence short and begin anew. Start fresh. Draw attention. Make your point. Your readers will thank you for it. Modern copywriting thrives on it.

Victoria White
http://thevirtualwriter.ca/