but beginning a sentence.“In his youth Dostoevsky had been attracted to utopian socialism of the Fourierist variety. But four years in a prison camp in Siberia shook his faith.” As this quotation from J.M. Coetzee shows, the conjunction but can be highly effective as a sentence opener. You may still hear the injunction against beginning a sentence with a conjunction. The idea is that these sentences express “incomplete” thoughts. But a glance through any magazine or newspaper will show you that beginning with but has become common practice, and initial but must be considered acceptable at all levels of style.
1
but not followed by a comma.But is generally not followed by a comma. Correct written style requires Kim wanted to go, but we stayed, not Kim wanted to go, but, we stayed.
2
but however. For a discussion of this word combination, see
redundancy under Style.
