used to join sentence elements of the same grammatical rank or function

Two of The Knitters, Katie and Sarah H., are copy editors. While it can put a little pressure on me to have two good friends who mind P’s and Q’s and i"s and t's for a living they are both so nice that I stick with my conversational style of writing when I email them. AND I get free grammar advice sometimes…but in a totally nice way. Not in that “Jennifer, I think you mean affect/don’t use a double-negative/whom not who!” way my father used to correct me when I was a child. Both of his parents taught school at one point. I’m assuming he gets it honest.

From Katie & Sarah H. I may get a friendly email saying, “Hey, on your October 29th post on your blog you wrote ‘there’ but I think you meant ‘their’.” Also I have come to them with grammar questions. So happy to obliged are they! Today I got an email from Sarah H. with a PROFESSIONAL ruling on starting a sentence with the word “And”. And here it is.

Dear Jennifer,

This is made-up grammar that teachers pass down. It isn't really a rule. I think it got started to prevent incomplete sentences, but you can write complete sentences that begin with "and."

From Modern American Usage (which always sounds delightfully snippy):

"A prejudice lingers from a bygone time that sentence should not begin with and. The supposed rule is without foundation in grammar, logic, or art. And can join separate sentences and their meanings just as but can both join sentences and disjoin meanings." (page 27)

And I feel very validated.