There are several fake grammar rules I despise. And chief among them is “Never start a sentence with a conjunction.”

In college, I once took a course in prose style. My term paper was about how the Welsh writer Arthur Machen (a renowned stylist — and the indirect source of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”) started not just sentences but paragraphs with a coordinating conjunction (“and” “or” “but”) to create a certain worldview (how things we think of as separate are actually connected).

I challenge anyone to find a standard grammar book from any era that says this is an error. It’s a fake rule used by lazy teachers to “help” students avoid sentence fragments. “I was standing outside the building. When the bomb exploded.” In this example, “When the bomb exploded” is a sentence fragment (the link at the end of your story explains all this). The simple way to fix the error is to combine the two sentences: “I was standing outside the building when the bomb exploded.” But correctness has nothing to do with where the writer puts the conjunction. The sentence “When the bomb exploded, I was standing outside the building.” is correct.

The two correct sentences

• I was standing outside the building when the bomb exploded.
• When the bomb exploded, I was standing outside the building.

actually say two different things. The first version starts with normalcy and then throws in the bomb to shatter the calm. The second starts with the explosive moment and creates suspense: what happened when the bomb exploded? The same kind of principle applies when a screenwriter decides how to start the first act.

So using the fake rule eliminates one of the writer’s options. And it means that all of one’s sentences will follow the same, monotonous pattern.

Style is one of the tools great writers use to create theme. And when a successful writer does on occasion deliberately break a real grammar rule, it’s for a reason.

Apologies for the lengthy diatribe.* But fake rules annoy the hell out of me.

*Deliberate sentence fragment — this one too.

I’m not saying sloppiness makes for a good script. But when the chief concern of writers is to be correct (whether it’s grammar or formatting), then their writing will never be as good as it can be.