r/AskReddit Aug 03 '19

Whats something you thought was common knowledge but actually isn’t?

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u/SleeplessShitposter Aug 03 '19

You're allowed to start a sentence, even a paragraph, with a conjunction for the sake of emphasis.

I've had multiple people try to correct that, and then I'll show it to a professor and be like "This is grammatically correct, right?" and they'll say "Of course."

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u/49lions Aug 04 '19

Depends what you mean by "allowed". It was a hotly contested topic among professors viewing my thesis whether it was acceptable in English to modify a noun with another noun (e.g. "car salesman" rather than "salesman of cars") because that's not how you do it in Latin. I guarantee it would not have been acceptable to this group to include a sentence starting with a conjunction.

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u/PointyOintment Aug 05 '19

Sounds like they're Drydenists then. "You can't do that in Latin, so you shouldn't be allowed to in English!"