For scams and urban legends, we have snopes.com. But what about the grammar myths that fill the air at so many workplaces? Are these five myths holding you back—or making you crazy?

If you think you can’t start a sentence with “but” or “because” or would rather get a root canal than split an infinitive, prepare to be liberated.

Myth One: You can’t start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like and, yet, or but.

What it would mean if true: All nine Supreme Court Justices would be incompetent writers.

Who says it’s a myth:

• Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.: This myth has “no historical or grammatical foundation”; “a substantial percentage [often as many as 10 percent] of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions” (5.206).
• American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: starting sentences with conjunctions is “rhetorically effective” (p. 70).
• Joseph Williams, Style: “Just about any highly regarded writer of nonfictional prose begins sentences with and or but, some more than once a page” (p. 182).
• Garner’s Modern American Usage: “It is a gross canard that beginning a sentence with but is stylistically slipshod” (p. 121).
• Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd ed.: “That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with and is a faintly lingering superstition. The OED gives examples ranging from the 10th to 19th c.; the Bible is full of them” (p. 29).
• Wilson Follett, Modern American Usage: “A prejudice lingers from a by-gone time that sentences should not begin with and. The supposed rule is without foundation in grammar, logic, or art. And can join separate sentences and their meanings just as but can both join sentences and disjoin meanings” (p. 27).
• Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage: “Everybody agrees that it’s all right to begin a sentence with and, and nearly everybody admits to having been taught at some past time that the practice was wrong. . . . Few commentators have actually put the prohibition in print; the only one we have found is George Washington Moon (1868)” (p. 93).

Myth Two: You can never split an infinitive.

What it would mean if true: The Star Trek writers should have rewritten this famous sentence: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Who says it’s a myth:

• Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.: “It is now widely acknowledged that adverbs sometimes justifiably separate an infinitive’s to from its principal verb” (5.106).
• The Elements of Style, 4th ed.: “Some infinitives seem to improve on being split,” as in “I cannot bring myself to really like that fellow” (p. 113).
• American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: “[T]he split infinitive is distinguished [by both] its length of use and the greatness of its users . . . noteworthy splitters include . . . Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather” (p. 441).
• Barbara Wallraff, Word Court: “Splitting an infinitive is preferable both to jamming an adverb between two verbs . . . and to ‘correcting’ a split in a way that gives an artificial result” (p. 99).
• Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd ed.: “We admit that separation of to from its infinitive is not in itself desirable,” but “we will split infinitives sooner than be ambiguous or artificial” (p. 581).

Myth Three: You can’t split a verb phrase.

What it would mean if true: You would have to write “he usually will take an extreme position,” not “he will usually take an extreme position.”

Who says it’s a myth:

• Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.: “There is no rule against adverbial modifiers between the parts of a verb phrase. In fact, it’s typically preferable to put them there” (5.168).
• Garner’s Modern American Usage: “[M]ost authorities squarely say that the best place for the adverb is in the midst of the verb phrase” (p. 23).
• Wilson Follett, Modern American Usage: “With a compound verb—that is, one made with an auxiliary and a main verb—the adverb comes between auxiliary and main verb (He will probably telephone before starting)” (p. 18).
• Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage: “This bugaboo, commentators agree, seems to have sprung from fear of the dread split infinitive” (p. 36).
• Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd ed.: “It is probably a supposed corollary of the accepted split-infinitive prohibition; at any rate, it is entirely unfounded. . . . There is no objection whatever to dividing a compound verb by adverbs” (pp. 464-65).

Myth Four: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition.

What it would mean if true: You would have to mimic Winston Churchill, who famously mocked the alleged rule by saying, “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”

Who says it’s a myth:

• Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.: “an unnecessary and pedantic restriction” (5.176).
• Garner’s Modern American Usage: The rule is “spurious” (p. 654).
• Patricia O’Connor, Woe is I: “This idea caught on, even though great literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Milton is bristling with sentences ending in prepositions” (p. 183).
• Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd ed.: “It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be kept true to their name and placed before the word they govern in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late” (p. 473).

Myth Five: You can’t start a sentence with because.

What it would mean if true: Emily Dickinson made a mistake when she wrote, “Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me.”

Who says it’s a myth:

• American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: starting a sentence with “because” is “perfectly appropriate” (p. 53).
• Mark Davidson, Right, Wrong, and Risky: starting a sentence with “because” is “fully accepted” (p. 105).
• Joseph Williams, Style: “[T]his particular proscription appears in no handbook of usage I know of” (p. 181).
• Garner’s Modern American Usage: “odd myth [that] seems to have resulted from third-grade teachers who were trying to prevent fragments” (p. 92).
• Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage: “This rule is a myth. Because is frequently used to begin sentences,” often “for greater emphasis” (p. 171).

Ross Guberman is the founder and president of Legal Writing Pro, an advanced legal-writing training and consulting firm. He has conducted more than a thousand programs on three continents for many of the largest and most prestigious law firms and for dozens of state and federal agencies and bar associations. Ross is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches an advanced seminar on drafting and writing strategy. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from Legal Writing Pro, where the article originally appeared.

When I ask my audiences which words or phrases they like to cut from their drafts, someone often mentions the word “that.”

Not so fast, I suggest.

Read this sentence to see why:

After an evidentiary hearing, the court found Buffalo Wild Wings was not a fast-food restaurant and, hence, was not covered by the restrictive covenant.

I plucked this example from the first pages of an Illinois Court of Appeals opinion on Buffalo Wild Wings and on trailing modifiers in restrictive covenants (don’t ask).

In this sentence, and in millions more just like it, cutting “that” does more harm than good.

After all, the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant wasn’t lost, so the court didn’t “find” it, despite what the court suggests.

Incidentally, we should also change “hence” to “thus” and cut the pair of commas.

So we end up with something like this:

After an evidentiary hearing, the court found that Buffalo Wild Wings was not a fast-food restaurant and thus was not covered by the restrictive covenant.

Other sentences in the opinion need similar fixes:

The court found the action was to determine the consequences of future action: in the event Reed returned the dozer, would Roland be obligated to accept it and return the purchase price?

The court didn’t find a lost action here; it found that the action had an aim.

Lopax appeals the court’s decisions (1) the restrictive covenant covered only fast-food restaurants serving primarily chicken, (2) the declaratory-judgment action was not barred by the doctrine of nonliability for past conduct, . . .

Lopax, for its part, didn’t appeal a “decision the restrictive covenant covered” (whatever that might mean); it appealed from a decision that the covenant covered a certain kind of restaurant.

Bottom line: give “that” a break. By doing so, you’ll be following the lead of our Supreme Court:

Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, opinion:

Austin had held that Congress could prohibit independent expenditures for political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity.

John Paul Stevens, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, dissent:

Yet in a variety of contexts, we have held that speech can be regulated differentially on account of the speaker’s identity, when identity is understood in categorical or institutional terms.

We have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment, and many legal scholars have long since rejected the concession theory of the corporation.

And our new Solicitor General:

Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., FCC v. Fox Television Stations, merits brief:

Fox contends that past Commission orders involving those words could not have alerted it that the Billboard Music Awards broadcasts would be considered indecent because the prior orders involved the “repeated[]” use of the expletives.

Moreover, many programs are not rated at all, and even for rated programs, a recent study found that “only 5% of parents felt that television ratings were always accurate.”

While acknowledging that its own standards “generally do not permit” broadcast of the F-Word or S-Word, Fox contends that those standards are “irrelevant to the vagueness analysis.”

Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., HHS v. Florida, merits brief:

In particular, Congress found that without a minimum coverage provision, “many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care,” taking advantage of the Act’s guaranteed-issue and community rating provisions, thereby driving up costs in the non-group market (and, indeed, threatening the viability of that market).

And even the Wall Street Journal:

The Georgia Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling concludes that the 1994 state law “restricts speech in violation of the free speech clauses” of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.¹

In congressional testimony on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that low rates penalize savers.²

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you never cut “that.” I’m simply suggesting that confusing the reader even for a second is far worse than including one short four-letter word. So while “The court found the bank” can mislead, “I suggest you call him” cannot.

And that’s enough of “that.”

1. Wall Street Journal, “Georgia Court Overturns Law Restricting Assisted Suicide,” Feb. 6, 2012.
2. Wall Street Journal, “Itchy Investors Ramp Up the Risk,” Feb. 6, 2012.

Ross Guberman is the founder and president of Legal Writing Pro, an advanced legal-writing training and consulting firm. He has conducted more than a thousand programs on three continents for many of the largest and most prestigious law firms and for dozens of state and federal agencies and bar associations. Ross is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches an advanced seminar on drafting and writing strategy. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from Legal Writing Pro, where the article originally appeared.

1. Should I use a serial comma?

Some say we should omit the last comma in a series because it takes up space. For lawyers, however, ambiguity is much scarier than an extra comma.

Every authority that matters in the legal world favors the serial comma: Strunk and White, Wilson Follett, the Chicago Manual of Style, and Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, just to name a few. The few authorities that disagree are all journalism guides.

Still not convinced? All nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices use the serial comma. Here are three examples:

Justice Breyer:

They have no access to newspapers, magazines, or personal photographs.¹

Justice Souter:

The thrust of this evidence was that, based on factual reports, professional observations, and tests, Clark was psychotic at the time in question, with a condition that fell within the category of schizophrenia.²

Justice Kennedy:

The Court’s tripartite structure is something not addressed by the state trial court, the state appellate court, counsel on either side in those proceedings, or the briefs the parties filed with us.³

2. Can I start a sentence with however?

Starting sentences with however is grammatically correct. Many good writers avoid doing so, however, because however is heavier than but. When these writers do use however, they move it into the middle of the sentence to emphasize the contrast:

Smith, however, was unable to compensate Jones.
Smith was unable, however, to compensate Jones.

In the recent Solomon Amendment case, Chief Justice John Roberts uses however six times mid-sentence. At the beginning of his sentences, he prefers but:

In its reply brief, the Government claims that this question is not before the Court because it was neither included in the questions presented nor raised by FAIR. […] But our review may, in our discretion, encompass questions “fairly included” within the question presented, […] and there can be little doubt that granting certiorari to determine whether a statute is constitutional fairly includes the question of what that statute says.⁴

3.  Can I start a sentence with and, but, or yet?

Yes, yes, and yes. Note the following sentences from Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:

Justice Stevens:

And that authority, if it exists, can derive only from the powers granted jointly to the President and Congress in time of war.

Justice Scalia:

But they surely gave Congress ample reason to doubt that their application in pending cases would unfold as naturally as the Court glibly assumes.

Justice Alito:

Yet the mere statement that a military court is a regularly constituted tribunal is of no help in addressing petitioner’s claim that his commission is not such a tribunal.

One small point: When you start a sentence with and, but, or yet, don’t use a comma. The purpose of these punchy conjunctions is to force the reader into the rest of the sentence. A comma does nothing but stop the flow.

4.  Can I start a sentence with because?

“You shouldn’t start sentences with because.” Really? It’s true that kids are inclined to say, “I want to stay inside. Because it’s raining.” But great adult writers can—and should—start sentences with because to emphasize cause and effect:

Kathleen Sullivan:

Because each posting of a work is technically a “copy,” each posting is within the reach of the Copyright Act.⁵

Lawrence Tribe:

Because all the undervotes that will be manually counted will be counted under this same standard, there is nothing to [Bush’s] equal protection claim.⁶

Walter Dellinger:

Because the team was not afforded funding, equipment, and facilities equivalent to those offered to boys’ teams, petitioner was denied an equal playing field from which to coach.⁷

Justice Ginsberg:

Because the deadly weapon Recuenco held was in fact a handgun, the prosecutor might have charged, as an alternative to the deadly weapon enhancement, that at the time of the assault, Recuenco was “armed with a firearm.”⁸

Justice Thomas:

Because the criminal justice system does not operate perfectly, abolition of the death penalty is the only answer to the moral dilemma the dissent poses.⁹

_____

1. Beard v. Banks (2006).
2. Clark v. Arizona (2006).
3. Id.
4. Rumsfeld v. FAIR (2006).
5. Petitioners’ brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003).
6. Respondents’ brief in Bush v. Gore (2000).
7. Petitioner’s brief in Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ. (2006).
8. Washington v. Recuenco (2006).
9. Kansas v. Marsh (2006).

Ross Guberman is the founder and president of Legal Writing Pro, an advanced legal-writing training and consulting firm. He has conducted more than a thousand programs on three continents for many of the largest and most prestigious law firms and for dozens of state and federal agencies and bar associations. Ross is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches an advanced seminar on drafting and writing strategy. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from Legal Writing Pro, where the article originally appeared.

A federal judge in Florida recently “corrected” dozens of errors in a routine motion.

He mainly fixed typos, but he also marked up several types of errors that many excellent writers make. Here are four examples; the sample sentences are from the judge’s corrected version.

1. Faulty capitalization of Order and Motion

Throughout the judge’s mark-up, he changes “order” to “Order” and “Motion” to “motion.”

What gives?

The convention is to lowercase these words when they are used generically to describe a category of actions or papers:

Defendant in this action has filed a motion to dismiss.

but to capitalize the words when they describe a specific document:

As indicated in Plaintiff’s response to Defendants’ Motion to
Dismiss . . . .

Plaintiff hereby files this Response to the Court’s Order . . . .

2. Faulty capitalization of Plaintiff, Defendant, and Court

This judge knows his capitalization rules.

The rule here is like the rule for orders and motions.

Capitalize Plaintiff, Defendant, and Court if (1) they are the plaintiff, defendant, or court in the case you’re litigating or (2) you are using Court to refer to the U.S. Supreme Court:

Defendant was not Plaintiff’s employer.

The Court subsequently denied Defendant’s motion.

But lowercase plaintiff, defendant, and court if (1) they are the plaintiff, defendant, or court in a case you’re citing or (2) if you’re referring to plaintiffs, defendants, and courts generically.

Plaintiff filed this action against the wrong defendant.

3. Faulty punctuation of quoted material

This judge is no Anglophile. He insists that his lawyers follow American usage rules for punctuating quoted material. And that means you must put periods and commas inside the closed quotation marks.

. . . sought relief against the “Good Samaritan Society,” that being a fictitious name for Defendant.

And no, there’s no exception for a single word—or even a single letter.

See Exhibit “A.”

(Note that here the lawyer didn’t need the quotation marks in the first place.)

4. Faulty use of ordinal numbers

Unless you’re writing a date in the “1st of January, 2010” format, always spell out ordinal numbers.

That’s why the judge objected to “7th Judicial Circuit.” As he suggests, it should be “Seventh Judicial Circuit.”

Click here to view The Marked-Up Motion

Ross Guberman is the founder and president of Legal Writing Pro, an advanced legal-writing training and consulting firm. He has conducted more than a thousand programs on three continents for many of the largest and most prestigious law firms and for dozens of state and federal agencies and bar associations. Ross is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches an advanced seminar on drafting and writing strategy. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from Legal Writing Pro, where the article originally appeared.