Oh, big sigh. Good writers have been using
and and
but to begin sentences since Old English. (Just take a gander at how many sentences begin with
and in the King James version of the Bible (starting with
Genesis). According to John McElroy, in his
Structure of English Prose: A Manual of Composition and Rhetoric (1885), George Campbell, the peevish, was the first to rant about this common usage in his
Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). Happy reading. (BTW, I agree with my esteemed colleague, tsuwm, in his suggesting Professor Crystal.)
