I've done of good bit of copy editing myself. My only journalism prize was a first prize for headline writing. I am pretty latitudinarian, but I am not antinomian. Disinterested and uninterested do not mean the same thing. But starting a sentence with a conjunction — as I just have — or ending one with a preposition seem OK to me. What works, works. What is wrong is wrong.
"And the war came." in Lincoln's second inaugural address has always seemed to me more than sufficient warrant for starting a sentence with conjunction. Wasn't Fowler comfortable with sentences ending in propositions?
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