conjunctions at the beginning of sentences

[battle]

Hi! How do I diagram a sentence that begins with a conjunction? What do I do with the "And" or "But"?

Thank you!

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by battle

Hi! How do I diagram a sentence that begins with a conjunction? What do I do with the "And" or "But"?

Thank you!

That's a very good question. I cannot find a source that deals with this issue. Because coordinating conjuctions are normally used to connect clauses, I would put the coordinating conjunction on a vertical dotted line that joins the main line before the subject. Except for that, I would diagram the sentence in the normal fashion.

|
and
|_____I_____|_____left______

This may not be correct, but it is the best I can come up with.

Another possibility would be to connect the two sentences as if they were one. But that would be indistinguishable from the single compund sentence diagram, which wouldn't be completely accurate. That said, this is an issue of punctuation and punctuation is really not considered in diagrams. If you choose this model, you would diagram the two independent clauses on separarte main lines, one over the other, and connect the verbs with a vertical dotted line connecting the two verbs. The conjunction would be written sideways on that dotted line.

[RonBee]

It's too bad we can't change the title of this one to conjunctions at the beginnings of sentences.

~R