UKH

Is it incorrect to start a sentence with the word "Or" ?

I would say so.

Not at all: there are no such hard and fast rules. Or are there?

If you're the sort that writes letters to The Times, then probably, yes.

For the rest of us, whyever should it be seen as 'incorrect' if it does the job of communicating what we want to convey?

I was using it in a casual context as a follow-up question in a brief text message conversation (sent someone a photo with the caption "Or was it about this guy?" and the rather aggressive autocorrect on my iPhone automatically (with no warning pop-up etc) changed the "Or" to "It", as soon as I'd typed "was". It did this on three consecutive attempts before it gave up (which was the only way I could create my "Or was it..." text string. 

Maybe phones and social media etc should have a "let me use sloppy grammar" option. 

This is a very old one. Fowler laid the matter to rest in Modern English Usage back in 1926, and as every writer knows, 'if it's OK for Fowler, it's OK': 

"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 the 19th c.; the Bible is full of them."

As Bill Bryson says in his excellent book Troublesome Words, "The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it."

They apply the same rule to all conjunctions. 

Quite a useful article: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/can-i-start-a-sentence-...

'Or' is a cordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so - FANBOYS), so the argument for not starting with 'or' is that it should be between the things it's coordinating. E.g. 'We could go climbing, or we could go running'. But, in reality, the bit your coordinating is assumed to be known by whoever is recieving your text - what your effectivly saying is 'was it about this guy, or was it about this (other) guy'. And, as Rob points out, you can flout these 'rules'

(I'm in work and my copies of Strunk & White and Hart's New Rules are at home so can't check what they say!)

Unfortunately "should of " conveys the right meaning in the minds of those who use it ( and even those who know better know what they meant to say).

Neither Strunk & White nor Hart's Rules seem to talk about it - but I find their indexes v hard to use, so may have missed it.

This happens a total of 843 times in Shakespeare's works, 14 times in Kennedy's speeches, 24 times in Obama's speeches, and 1,186 times in the Bible (I'm not kidding)

So probably it is OK

That's not what it conveys to me when I see people write it!

It's not incorrect; it's a matter of context and stylistic effect. It's useful for emphasis, and can be used  in creative writing and other situations where rhetorical devices are acceptable. It's often deprecated for more formal contexts like business or legal use.

The most staggeringly effective use of 'Or' to start (and finish!) a sentence that I know of is in the final sentence/s of Nietzsche's Daybreak (this is the Hollingdale translation. I don't know whether Kaufmann does it the same way - can't get at at the moment because I'm redecorating and that bookcase is all covered in polythene.):

"Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach an India  but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, my brothers. Or?"
 

Excellent example...

 Me neither. But it's becoming so common that there is a danger of it being accepted, since we all know what the writer intended to convey when he chose those words and , since the meaning has been conveyed, it passes the first test. 

It conveys the meaning even though any attempt at parsing the sentence would be a failure.

My German pal from Dresden -- Nietzsche country -- often follows her speculative sentences, even when speaking English, with an "Oder?", just as we'd say, "Yeah?"; as if requiring a response. V idiomatic in the language.

I think the difference is that starting a sentence with 'Or' conveys something that not doing so would fail to achieve: it forces the reader to stop before commencing with the 'Or'.

'Should of' enjoys no such advantage and is simply erroneous, but sadly that is no guarantee that it won't end up being classed as acceptable grammar anyway.

It would be interesting to know if Nietzsche uses 'oder' in the original. I presume he does.

The bad news is that Merriam Webster is already listing "of" as an auxiliary verb in "uneducated speech".

I don't have a problem with "or" at the beginning or prepositions at the end of a sentence.

He does.

Or is French for gold. There you go.

Yes, he does.

Wird man vielleicht uns einstmals nachsagen, daß auch wir, nach Westen steuernd, ein Indien zu erreichen hofften, – daß aber unser Los war, an der Unendlichkeit zu scheitern? Oder, meine Brüder? Oder?

But that's a bit different because the 'of' is only what 'have' sounds like in some speech. And it just happens to be another well used word. So gets substituted in written form too. Doesn't make it correct, and in this case I hope it doesn't become accepted either.

I share your hope but my earlier post  at 18.59 indicates that the rot may have already set in.

Ho hum, if we are embracing rapid change as a credo of modernity then language is within that compass.

"Oder?" is a very common question in all German speaking countries following a stated opinion, and is to be understood as "Don't you agree?" or "Am I/is this not correct?". Translating it simply as "Or?" in this example has a certain literary charm, but in my view it misses the forcefulness of the original. ("Do you not agree, my brothers? Do you not?").

Thanks. I have the German version somewhere but as I say, because of decorating, all those bookshelves are under wraps at present. It looks to my untutored eye that the Hollingdale translation is very straight.

How about the modern English translation, "innit bruv? innit?"

Brilliant, I'll buy it!

Ah. So perhaps the Hollingdale translation is too straight? Anyhow, it's still a wonderfully provocative way to end a book. Equalled perhaps by the spine-chilling bulls-eye of his final sentence in 'On the Genealogy of Morals ...

You could probably do a lot of Nietzsche like that very successfully. What a brilliant idea for a publisher to take up!

I know two-thirds of naff all about German literature and language both but from an English language point of view, the 'Do you not . . .' construction seems rather less forceful than a straightforward 'Do you . . . '.

T.

Replacing Nietzsche's best-known phrase with 'No pain no gain, innit' seems a most acceptable trade.

T.

That's true. But then the German phrase would be "Habe ich recht?" or "Am I right?"; the "don't you ..."  has an element of unsurety which the "Oder?" also has ... really getting into subtleties here ... CB294, come and help us out!

This is the most chilled-out, no-stick-up-the-arse post I’ve seen you make on here for AGES! This redecoration lark must me lifting your spirits!

As an aside, I was examining some of your work earlier this evening....

Wiping it from history would be an even bigger improvement.

"God is dead" > "No pain no gain, innit". Yes, I like it

I took the phrase to be, 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger'.

Which is what I had in mind.  I'll have to have a think about what might equate to 'God is dead'.

T.

"There's nuffink, innit, yer born, you live, ya die"?

Determining the Oder-Neisse line!

Yes, I knew very well what he meant. I was attempting a joke, while at the same time making a perhaps snarky point about what his "best-known phrase" is. Which is exactly why I put a smilie in there so I didn't offend! These things are too subtle, maybe.

Btw, it may indeed be the case that the "kill me/stronger" phrase is better known these days, with internet memes, motivational speeches and fridge magnets etc, but for the first 120 years after he wrote it, I'd say that "God is dead" was far better known.

End Of.

There is a long history in the English language of words changing due to mispronunciations and misunderstandings. Metathesis is the most obvious example - while we may cringe at 'nucular' and 'comfterble', equally a pedantic speaker of Old English transported to the 21st century might well be appalled by 'bird' (bridd) or 'horse' (hros).

'I'll have to have a think about what might equate to 'God is dead''

How about, 'Donald Trump is president and Boris Johnson is prime minister'?

It would seem that the Devil's obviously in good health.

T.

Interesting that it is a translation of a German that's cited here and Tudor English that's cited above. The German 'oder' and the English 'or' are used slightly differently, most importantly, with 'oder' in German being used far more often by itself. I don't know anything about your Nietzsche translation, but if you translated a text into English that faithfully these days, I reckon you'd get a little bit of flack for not having been 'free' enough.

Similarly, much of Tudor English (also closer to Germanic languages than modern English) wouldn't be de rigueur for a modern piece of writing, so I'd be inclined to not take either as great evidence of it being acceptable to use 'or' at the start of a sentence.  

Or if you want don't want some weird archaic sentence structure, I'd say the best example of where it might be okay is the 2nd response to this thread, with it directly relating back to another sentence.

Cute.

ha!

Yes it is !

Or not.

Or I could just point out that "Or not" is not a sentence. Thank you

Or (is it) not ?

It actually _is_ a sentence, only parts of it (ow which the verb) are elided

OK, I agree! Or let's call it a draw ha-ha-ha. Or let's not.

If it's not a sentence, it soon will be.

Or else!

Elision is a major part of our language, whether spoken or written. Although it's so fundamental, astonishingly there have always been droves of people who either don't understand it or are ignorant of it, even though it's been a major linguistic device throughout our literary and colloquial history.

In what is arguably the greatest play in the English language Lear says:

'What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.'

And, at that amazing scene at the very end:

'No, no, no life! … Look on her! look! her lips!'
 

Ah ! 

Cordelia!

Brings me back to my favourite climbing topic.

Anyone been there yet?

FFS it's only HVS! Get yourselves down there and do it!

"Uneducated writing" surely. The fact that "of" and "have" when unstressed sound exactly the same in most people's speech (including educated people) is the root of the problem (or is it the route of the problem?) The, perfectly grammatical, contraction of "have" to " 've" compounds the problem further.  I've no grate expertise in this though. If anyone has, I'll bough to their opinion.

Martin

I don't think you 'bough' unless you're rather wooden in nature.

It's still amazing, even revolting, to me that anyone who likes and understands our language isn't shocked and appalled by the substitution of the possessive participle 'of' for part of a verb. This embarrassing malaproprism is to me as shocking as someone telling us that they can't eat crabs because they're crushed Asians.

It also relates in several serious ways with a tweet someone else (@petertimmins3) made earlier today: 

'Funny how people who don't know the difference between "there and their", "to and too" and "your and you're", would have us believe they are all experts in economics, international trade, climate science, free trade agreements and the UK constitution.'

Crushed Asians is a Malapropism. I think that calling “should of” etc. a Malapropism, goes beyond the essence of what a Malapropism is, even if the definition doesn’t demand an “amusing” aspect 

The essence of a malapropism is that it's the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one (basically, hearing a word wrongly). Often they're exotically, amusingly wrong, but although this is not a particularly exotic or amusing example, it's still rather excruciating. Malapropisms are always embarrassing/cringe-making to some degree or other.

Know their knot. Water loader nonce scents.

I'm still failing to get over hearing "the Artic" is a place rather than an instance of a type of vehicle.  I do, however, admit to asking, rather vacantly, someone who was driving why you needed "bad shoulders" to be able to use a particular car park.

I've just done a Google and see that someone describes 'should of' as possibly 'the most frequent malapropism of all'. (https://toponlinecollegeblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/8-embarrassing-yet-co...)

Some other links:

https://www.theenglishisland.com/lessons/common-english-malapropisms/

http://atticawriting.com/2015/04/15/malapropism/

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/4-exasperating-malapropisms/

You’ve “just done a Google”? 

to google, verb.

I google
You google
Gordon googles

I know, but “doing a Google” has a faint whiff of something that should now be scooped up in a plastic bag and disposed of properly, plus coming from someone who is “revolted” by people who aren’t “shocked” at the use of “should of”, it feels a bit rich 

I Google

You look on the interwebbynet.

Gordon researches...

... like by hanging it from a binary search tree

Keep up the good fight Gordon. And don't stand for the abusive substitution of reflexive pronouns for the simpler (and correct) subject or object.

"I'm delighted to meet with yourself" "Myself and my wife went to France"

Age shall not dim my resolve, no matter how ingrained this aberration becomes.

"And this one is a photograph of Charles and I in front of le Musée des Moulages."

may  I add "I've a lot of holiday photographs, including in the hotel"?

All BBC people seem to have been simultaneously ordered to use include incorrectly.  Are they now disciplined by antigrammarians for breaches of this order, including on the news?

Sorry. "....representations of uneducated speech."

That's a noun innit?

Best one I ever heard was somebody who had been drinking a bit too much described as being "abbreviated."

I have be careful to avoid too much "abbreviation" when I'm out quizzing with my friends Vic and Regina in case I resort to spoonerisms.

A characteristic of texting is ellipsis. There is usually an element of inference and an attempt to mimic conversation. The author of a text expects the reader to "get it", therefore new grammar "rules" arise. Hence a sentence can start any way you like as long as effective communication is sustained.

The conventions of Standard English are useful as a reference point for examining language. I don't think we should think of them as prescriptive any more. 

"Could've", "should've" etc. People are simply making a mistake. How would "could ent", or "Should ant" look to those who say it does not matter?

There I am: being prescriptive... 

I think it's simpler than that. Traditionally, two sentences could be joined with a conjunction, preceded by a comma. Now it's generally accepted that the conjunction can be preceded by a full stop, mostly for emphasis, i.e. a slight dramatic pause. Or there can be an intermediate version, using a semi-colon; but it tends to look a tad old-fashioned.

This is exactly why I was aggrieved that the text-messaging autocorrect was so stubborn. 

Do we already live in the telephony of things?   I am confused by the number of inanimate things, some of them even intangible or abstract, that, according to chattering broadcasters that I now hear several or even many times each day, "informing" each other or "speaking" to each other.  This is happening behind my back and I've tried eavesdropping but I have never heard abstract or inanimate things "inform" or "speak" to each other spontaneously.  Obviously modems and transmitters can convey information but they are doing it under some form of human control and are not abstract.  This new situation makes me think there is a kind of STASI operating out there stealthily.

Should I pay for some time with Alexa?  Would that help?  Confused. I'm often having to switch things off to avoid having this idea spoken to me.  Should I get counselling from Gordon?

I appreciate the work you did on that post