Hi All I've noticed some common faults with grammar and thought I should raise this, just as a reminder or aid for anyone that is not a native-English speaker/writer.
I've come across instances when editing documentation where conjunctions (words that are used to connect two or more clauses, phrases or words together to make longer constructions) are being used to start sentences. The most common words that I've noticed are "because" and "but". It is considered bad English to start a sentence with them. We tend to encourage the use of "As" instead of "because" and "However" instead of "but" at the beginning of sentences. There are other examples of words to use as alternatives but I thought I'd stick with the most common ones used in technical documentation. The only time conjunctions are used to begin a sentence is when you have a subordinating conjunction - where 2 or more unequal clauses are joined together. This is when you see examples such as the following: *When** I arrived home, they had already eaten. * *Although** he can’t swim, he goes sailing. * Another type of conjunction is the co-ordinating conjunction (where two or more items of equal syntactic importance are joined together). An example of a co-ordinating conjunction is as follows: "The fox jumped over the fence *because* he was escaping." Where I have seen "but" being used in technical documents, at the beginning of sentences, I've changed it for another conjunctive adverb that is more acceptable at the beginning of sentences, for example "However". This is usually followed with a comma and is more grammatically correct than using "But". For example, "*However, *the fox was chased by a dog". (Just to confuse you now, you can also use *however* to join two main clauses.) I hope this makes sense. Don't ask me why we tend to do it this way, all I know is that is the proper way. If it is done differently elsewhere in the world I'd love to hear about it. -- Best wishes Claire Wood
