the new english? Totally different point

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Several years ago I started seeing in newspapers, especially in editorial
>writing, a sentence beginning with a conjunction followed by a comma.
>More recently it has become pervasive.
>
>I'm not going to be so schoolmarmish to suggest that you can't begin a
>sentence with a conjunction. I do it myself. But that damn comma really
>bugs me. The whole point of starting with a conjunction is for flow, and
>the comma disrupts that.
>
>Since I write for newspapers for a living, I have several different
>manuals of style, and not all of them were transcribed by monks. The
>prescriptive rule is that an opening phrase _may_ be set off by a comma
>but never an opening single word. And none of the books I have even
>contemplate -- contemplates? -- following an opening conjunction with a
>comma.

I hope I am understanding the point correctly.

Surely "However, ...." or "Alternatively, ...." or "Furthermore, ...." is
widely accepted?

In such expressions, I suppose the function of the comma is (as usual) to
denote a pause (more or less).

These big words are no longer fashionable (and/or maybe not readily
understood by the postliterati?), so they are replaced by "But, ....", "Or,
....", "And, ...." respectively. At least I think that's part of what's
happening.

-- Doug Wilson