| 词组 | and |
| 释义 | and 1. Everybody agrees that it's all right to begin a sentence with and, and nearly everybody admits to having been taught at some past time that the practice was wrong. Most of us think the prohibition goes back to our early school days. Bailey 1984 points out that the prohibition is probably meant to correct the tendency of children to string together independent clauses or simple declarative sentences with ands: "We got in the car and we went to the movie and I bought some popcorn and...." As children grow older and master the more sophisticated technique of subordinating clauses, the prohibition of and becomes unnecessary. But apparently our teachers fail to tell us when we may forget about the prohibition. Consequently, many of us go through life thinking it wrong to begin a sentence with and. Few commentators have actually put the prohibition in print; the only one we have found is George Washington Moon: • It is not scholarly to begin a sentence with the conjunction and —The Bad English of Lindley Murray and Other Writers on the English Language, 1868 (in Baron 1982) Phythian 1979 does advise following the "old rule," but he recommends it not as a rule but as a general guideline. Many commentators advise not overusing and at the beginning of a sentence. It is perhaps overuse that led to this criticism: • The book has another distinction in that practically every other sentence begins with one of those suspended, capital-letter "Ands" which are becoming so popular—Saturday Rev., 12 Feb. 1927 The Literary Digest seems to have had so many inquiries about the propriety of beginning a sentence with and throughout the 1920s that its editors came up with a stock answer. Here is the version of 5 April 1930: • The practise of beginning sentences with the conjunction "and" dates from 855, and can be verified from The Old English Chronicle (Parker M. S.). The use may be found also in Shakespeare's King John (act iv, scene 1), the Gospel of St. John, xxi:21; Grote's "History of Greece," and Kingsley's "Hypatia." Here are two contemporary examples of initial and. In the second example, it even begins a paragraph: • He didn't believe I found the cart abandoned at a tilt in an alley. And then I turned over into his hands the cash receipts. To the penny —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • "Now, boys," he said, "I want to read you an essay. This is titled The Art of Eating Spaghetti.'" • And he started to read. My words! He was reading my words out loud to the entire class —Russell Baker, Growing Up, 1982 2. There are several other usage problems involving and. These are covered at such entries as and so; and which, and who; agreement, subject-verb: compound subjects 1; faulty parallelism; good and; and try and. |
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