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Sentence Beginnings With Correlative Conjunctions

By Marciano Guerrero

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Published: 06Mar2010
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By choosing to start his long novel David Copperfield with the correlative conjunction 'whether/or,' Charles Dickens signals the reader that perhaps we should search of more than one hero in the story. This is a startling beginning:

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

And from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility:

"Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the conversation she missed; although the latter was an everlasting talker, and from the first had regarded her with a kindness which ensured her a large share of her discourse."

Because correlative conjunctions add clarity, crispness, and fluidity to the narrative, these pairs are quite transparent to the reader; they perform their function in an unobtrusive manner. Thus we can say that correlative conjunctions don't call attention to themselves:

1. both . . . and
2. either . . . or
3. just as . . . so
4. neither . . . nor
5. not only . . . but
6. not only . . . but also
7. not only because . . . but also because
8. whether . . . or

In his novelette Breakfast at Tiffany's, master writer Truman Capote chooses the 'both/and' pair as a sentence opener:

"Both Holly and I used to go there six, seven times a day, not for a drink, not always, but to make telephone calls: during the war a private telephone was hard to come by."

When they are chosen as sentence openers, these pairs stir up the readers' attention, making them wonder why they have been uprooted from the middle to the front. "Why has the furniture been rearranged?" they would ask.

Laura Esquivel in her novel Like Water for Chocolate:

"Either her blouse had a wrinkle, or there wasn't enough hot water, or her braid came out uneven—in short, it seemed Mama Elena's genius was for finding fault."

Robert Graves in his novel I, Claudius:

"Either she would refuse it or she would accuse him of wasting on other women what he denied her."

"Either the fellow galloped off the field or surrendered instead of fighting, or some officious private soldier got the blow in first."

"Not only did she manage her huge household in the efficient way I have described, but she bore an equal share with him in public business."

In his aesthetics treatise Art as Experience, note how John Dewey, the American philosopher, opens his sentences:

"Not only does the direct sense element —and emotion is a mode of sense— tend to absorb all ideational matter, but apart from special discipline enforced by physical apparatus, it subdues and digests all that is merely intellectual."

Neither a world wholly obdurate and sullen in the face of man nor one so congenial to his wishes that it gratifies all desired is a world in which art can arise."

Besides being a pragmatist American Philosopher, John Dewey was a progressive educator. And while philosophical tracts are daunting, difficult, tedious, and often intractable to the common reader, Dewey's writings remain fresh and accessible.Most of the techniques we advocate in this textbook may be found in Art as Experience.

And in the following example from the Vicar of Wakefield, the narrator by means of the pair —neither ... nor— injects a flash forward to advance the story:

"Neither the fatigues and dangers he was going to encounter, nor the friends and mistress, for Miss Wilmot actually loved him, he was leaving behind, [in] any way damped his spirits (Goldsmith)."

And Laura Esquivel once again:

Neither she nor Rosaura knew how to make them; when Tita died, her family's past would die with her."

"Not only could she crack sack after sack of nuts in a short time, [but] she seemed to take great pleasure in doing it."

Master writers exploit the mind's expectation for closure. When in common speech we hear the expression, "Like waiting for the other shoe to tall," we quickly grasp and agree that there's an imminent expectation that perhaps bodes ill.

It may not be necessarily so, but we can't help to expect something nefarious.

With these pithy words (correlative conjunctions), professional writers create hook sentences and hook paragraphs. As can be seen from the examples cited above, correlative conjunctions may be used for both fiction and non-fiction.

Marciano Guerrero is a retired investment banker, Columbia University-educated. The only writing textbook I consult is Mary Duffy's e-book: Sentence Openers. To read my book reviews of the Classics visit my blog: Writing To Live

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