Beginning Sentences Correctly and Effectively in Your Thesis or Dissertation
Each sentence of the scholarly English prose you write for your thesis or dissertation should start in ways that are precise and complete, and certain elements of writing should never appear in that initial position. Numerals, for instance, must be avoided, so any number at the beginning of a sentence should instead be written out as words. If writing the relevant number as words would prove long and cumbersome, the sentence should be reworded to avoid using the number first. Many abbreviations must also be avoided at the beginning of sentences, although acronyms and initialisms are usually acceptable. Ideally, English sentences should not start with conjunctions such as ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘but’ and ‘so,’ although the occasional lapse in this regard, even in formal scholarly writing, is usually tolerated as long as the sentence does not begin a paragraph, the meaning is clear for readers and the rhythm of the prose is effective.
It is important to remember that when a descriptive phrase such as ‘Whenever she walks’ or ‘In 1996’ is used at the beginning of a sentence, it applies to everything that follows until the subject changes or is restated. This means that ‘In 1996 he wrote his first story and began to work on longer texts in 1998’ is a problematic sentence because the date 1996 applies incorrectly to ‘began’ as well as correctly to ‘wrote,’ so rewording is necessary. Either ‘He wrote his first story in 1996 and began to work on longer texts in 1998’ or ‘In 1996 he wrote his first story and in 1998 he began to work on longer texts’ would be more accurate and better English.
Sentences are often rendered problematic because they begin with dangling participles, which can also turn up elsewhere in sentences. A dangling participle occurs when a participle or participial phrase is followed by a word other than the subject it modifies. A clear example can be seen in ‘Having found the correct medication, the ailing cat was finally treated.’ In such a simple sentence, it may be clear to the reader that the person treating the cat is the one who ‘found the correct medication,’ but the sentence does not actually say that. It says that ‘the ailing cat’ was the one who ‘found the correct medication’ because the cat is the subject that appears immediately after the participial phrase. This sentence should therefore be reworded so that its syntax accurately reflects reality: ‘Having found the correct medication, the veterinarian finally treated the ailing cat.’
Dependent clauses of other kinds that tend to appear at the beginning of sentences can present problems as well, particularly when they are mistakenly used as independent clauses or full sentences. Although a dependent clause contains a subject and a verb (as the opening clause of this sentence does), it does not express a complete thought; instead, it often begins with a dependent marker word such as ‘after,’ ‘when,’ ‘if,’ ‘because’ and ‘although’ that leaves the reader waiting for the completion of the thought. ‘After he drafted his thesis’ and ‘Because she is afraid of the water’ are good examples. As an incomplete thought, a dependent clause should be followed by a comma and an independent clause that does complete the thought – ‘After he drafted his thesis, he had it proofread by a professional editor’ – or preceded by an independent clause that clarifies the context: ‘We did not bring our dog on the boat trip because she is afraid of the water.’
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