Grammar Lesson of the Day: because  Grammar Lesson of the Day:
because.  Some years ago I began to notice that my college
freshmen had all gotten a very strange idea.  They had been
taught that one must never begin a sentence with the word
because.  I have no idea where high school teachers came up with
this one.  It is like alligators in the Manhattan sewers, or
aliens landing in Roswell.  Some kook huddled in a condemned
building says it, and all at once everybody “knows” it, though
it is not in the slightest bit true.  There’s nothing special
about the word because.  It’s a subordinating conjunction, like
a hundred others.  Any of them may begin a sentence – so long as
it’s a sentence they are beginning.  A sentence, whether it
begins with because or if or since or although or whenever or
while or whatever or whatever, requires a main clause.  This is
not a sentence:  Because I could not stop for death.  But it’s
because it lacks a main clause.  Let Emily Dickinson supply one:
The “rule” that the teacher