Because I said so

Tip of the day: you don't need a comma before because. It is not a conjunction. Why? I don't know. It's too early to go into long, drawn-out discussions that nobody really cares about. Just don't use a comma before because. OK? Thanks.

Happy Friday!

I think I'm about done with this

Being an editor, I deal with stupid people and stupid mistakes all day long. It's kind of my thing. But sometimes it gets to me, like when I have a five-page interview that looks like it was transcribed by a deaf person. Here's my friendly advice to the transcriptionist on this one:

Yet,

In professional writing, it's never appropriate to start a sentence with a conjunction. Conjunctions join sentences. That's their purpose. In creative writing you can do whatever you want and call it stylistic, but not in professional writing. If you want to sound like a reasonably intelligent human being who has been to high school, don't start sentences with conjunctions.

Here's something I just don't understand. If you absolutely must start a sentence with a conjunction because you are unable to construct a complete sentence otherwise or you think you're being artistic, why the hell would you put a comma after it?

The codependency of commas and conjunctions

Okay, so you know how you always use a comma and a conjunction to join two complete sentences? That doesn't mean that you use a comma every single time you come across one of the conjunction words. When they are not being used to join two separate sentences, they do not require commas. They are free to roam the world on their own without always having to follow that stupid comma around.

Just so we're on the same page, let's do a couple of practice sentences. Ready?

Oh, conjunctions

Remember conjunctions, those cute little words that we use along with a comma to bond two separate sentences? Aren't they neat? Here's that list again, in case you'd forgotten:

For
And
Not
But
Or
Yet
So

I'm going to try and explain this to you

Did you get it from the title? Okay, this seriously bugs me. So fix it. Right now.

Brooks Conrad is going to try and make the team this year.

If you know who Brooks Conrad is, you know this sentence is improbable anyway. But aside from meaning, what's the deal with saying "try and make"? What you're effectively saying is:

Then is not a conjunction

We all know our conjunctions, right? I'm going to go ahead and skip over what a conjunction actually does (the function of the conjunction, if you will) for today, but here's a list of acceptable conjunctions:

For
And
Not
But
Or
Yet
So