Yes, you can start a sentence with and.

There used to be an idea that it was inelegant to begin a sentence with and. The idea is now as good as dead. To use and in this position can be a useful way of indicating that what you are about to say will reinforce what you have just said.

Many children are taught that it is ungrammatical to begin a sentence with a conjunction (what I have been calling a coordinator). Because they sometimes write in fragments. And are shaky about when to use periods. And when to capitalize. Teachers need a simple way to teach them how to break sentences, so they tell them that sentences beginning with and and other conjunctions are ungrammatical.

Whatever the pedagogical merits may be of feeding children misinformation, it is inappropriate for adults. There is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with a coordinator... As we saw in chapter 5, and, but and so are among the commonest coherence markers, and they may be used to begin a sentence whenever the clauses being connected are too long or complicated to fit comfortably into a single megasentence. I've begun about a hundred sentences with and or but in [this] book so far.

The idea that and must not begin a sentence, or even a paragraph, is an empty superstition. The same goes for but. Indeed either word can give unimprovably early warning of the sort of thing that is to follow.

Objection is sometimes taken to employment of but or and at the beginning of a sentence; but for this there is much good usage.

There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.

During the 19th century, some schoolteachers took against the practice of beginning a sentence with a word like but or and, presumably because they noticed the way young children overused them in their writing. But instead of gently weaning the children away from overuse, they banned the usage altogether! Generations of children were taught they should ‘never’ begin a sentence with a conjunction. Some still are.

If your teachers or your organization are inflexible about this issue, then you should respect their opinion, but ultimately, it’s just a point of view and you’re not being ungrammatical. If you want to defend your position, you can say that it’s particularly useful to start a sentence with these conjunctions if you’re aiming to create a dramatic or forceful effect.

There is a persistent belief that it is improper to begin a sentence with and, but this prohibition has been cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo-Saxon times onwards.

A prejudice lingers from the days of schoolmarmish rhetoric that a sentence should never begin with and.

The supposed rule is without foundation in grammar, logic, or art.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon Englands mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

St Kevin and the blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside

His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

Nevertheless that a male dissembler who by deluging her with untenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers reaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by unsought and wringing occurences. And some profess to have attained the same knowledge by experiment and aforesaid, and jauntily continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect. Sergeant Troy was one.

And thus they live unto hir lives ende

In parfit joye; and Jhesu Crist us sende

Housbondes meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde.

And grace t'overbide her that we wedde;

The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended less on any single event, or any particular person; for though they each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it.

PROSPERO:

A devil, a born devil on whose nature

Nurture can never stick, on whom my pains,

Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost.

And as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,

Even to roaring.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have hekd his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther… And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.