Sentence-initial "As well"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Mar 22, 2011, at 5:20 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:

> I have just read a student essay in which about 10% of the sentences begin with "As well [comma]"--instead of "Moreover" or "Furthermore" or "What is more" or "Also."  Our students (evidently) have been taught to stick in lots of "transitions," but sentence-initial "As well" strikes me as abnormal.  As well, the essay didn't have much content.

vexingly, i'm sure i've been through this discussion, and i thought it was here on ADS-L, but i can't find a trace of it.

about 20 years ago, a friend of mine who edits material (including scholarly writing) for publication complained to me about sentence-initial [connective] "as well" (which she was finding surprisingly often in otherwise very polished writing -- surprisingly, because she associated the usage with vernacular speech and unpracticed writing), and i recalled similar complaints from composition teachers at Ohio State in the 1970s.

asking around a few years later, i gathered similar complaints, but also baffled responses from Canadian writers, who found the usage entirely natural. Bryan Garner, as it turns out, was already on the case.  from Garner's Modern American Usage (3rd ed.):

*as well*. When used at the beginning of a sentence, this phrase has traditionally been considered poor usage. [not in MWDEU, so i don't have easily available cites from the advice literature about the tradition in question] But in Canada it's standard as an equivalent of _Also, ..._ or _In addition,..._

Garner gives three examples from Canadian publications -- Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, MacLean's -- edited for AmE, with _And_ in two cases and _Also,_ in one.

the case is interesting, because it's hard to see how you could object to "As well" on logical grounds (while accepting "In addition" and the formal idioms "Moreover" and "Furthermore"); the objection is clearly to the kinds of people who use it and to the contexts in which they use it -- as for sentence-initial "Plus".

arnold

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