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starting a sentence with "therefore"
3

starting a sentence with "therefore"

starting a sentence with "therefore"

(OP)
I submitted the following as part of a report for my boss' technical review.

Quote:

The location of the heat appears to be limited to the fuse clip or the load-side terminal of DS29.  Therefore, this hotspot does not pose any concern for any circuits other than the circuits fed by DS29.

My boss brought it back with the following corrections:

Quote:

The location of the heat appears to be limited to the fuse clip or the load-side terminal of DS29.  Line side wiring and terminations do not appear to be affected, therefore, this hotspot does not pose any concern for any circuits other than the circuits fed by DS29.

So he did two things:
#1 - He clarified that the first sentence excludes the line side.  OK, I thought that was obvious but I can accept that he wants to spell it out.
#2 - He joined two sentences with a comma-delimited "therefore".  He said one should never start a sentence with the word "therefore".

I resisted my urge to whack him upside the head and just grunted at him instead.  It looks to me like he just created a paragraph that has a lot more words arranged in a less-clear structure (run-on sentence).

Is he right about not starting a sentence with therefore?

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RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

(OP)
In fact his second sentence seems more than just a run-on sentence... it seems like an incorrect sentence structure. Isn't it?

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Your boss is wrong about "one should never start a sentence with the word 'therefore."
-- Never say 'never.'

"Therefore,..." is OK as the start of a conclusion.  
The sentence ", therefore,..." is too long.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

The grammatical error can be fixed by replacing the comma preceding therefore with a semicolon thusly:
"Line side wiring and terminations do not appear to be affected; therefore, this hotspot does not pose any concern for any circuits other than the circuits fed by DS29."

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

And while we're at it, the old strictures about starting sentences with other conjunctions seem to be falling into abeyance.

But I'm not sure if we'd all agree.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Your boss was having a "slow news" day.

rmw

PS: was your report intended to go up to the neckties or other non technical types who wouldn't intuitively have understand the fore going and need it spelled out?  I often have to revise things that I have to pass along upstairs because I know the technical incompetence of the readers that it has to go to.  If anything can be misunderstood, they will misunderstand it.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

2
Genesis 11:9 (ESV)  
    Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

It's in the Bible.  Your boss is a heathen.



RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

That, or he doesn't speak Elizabethan era English.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Re "the old strictures about starting sentences with other conjunctions" -- How old would that be??
"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debters.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil... Amen."
-- King James Bible (1611).

Re the word which started it all:
"Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober..."
--- 1 Peter 1:13

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

There is only one thing worse than being wrong, it's being right and showing up your boss as being wrong.

Therefore, be a good boy and do as you're told otherwise your name will be entered in the little black book... sad

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Personally, I prefer yours, but, if you had asked me I would have said, in either case, dont use "any" twice...I had to read that a couple times to be sure what you meant...

I would change it to...


"The location of the heat appears to be limited to the fuse clip or the load-side terminal of DS29.  Therefore, this hotspot does not pose any concern for circuits other than those fed by DS29."


RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

(OP)
Yes, I agree that it reads better.  If it changed the meaning of the sentence, I would care.

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RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

(OP)
I should clarify, it's not because I don't care about good writing practices in general.

I believe in putting the effort where it is warranted.  

Some documents are worth polishing and some are not, depending on the audience and purpose of the document.  This one was not.  

Yes, I do appreciate the importance of making my boss happy.  I also appreciate that I don't have unlimited time to meet the demands placed upon me.  The result is that I prioritize my activities and resist requests to spend time on activities that add no value.

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Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Greg Locock, you crack me up.  You have started every sentence in your posts with conjunctions.  Subtle humor, indeed.  As Admiral Boom said to Mr. Binnacle in the movie Mary Poppins, "Well hit, sir!"

debodine

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Even if you want to make the boss happy, at a minimum you need to take kenvlach's correction and change the comma before "therefore" to a semicolon.

The boss is completely wrong, though.  Even if one buys into the prohibition against starting a sentence with a conjuction, "therefore" is not a conjunction.  It's an adverb.  A conjunctive adverb, if you will, but an adverb nonetheless.

http://www.esldesk.com/grammar/adverbs.htm

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

(OP)
Thanks Hg.  I'm going to print that out and show it to my boss.  If he can correct my grammar, than I can certainly correct his (without whacking him upside the head).

=====================================
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RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

electricpete - be kind and gentle as you do it....boss's egos are sometimes very frail.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

I think your boss has confused "therefore" with "however" (not in the meanings of the words, but in their traditional grammatical position).  The word "however" is not intended to be used at the beginning or end of a sentence.  I've never seen anything about the location of the word "therefore" in a sentence, but logic puts it at the beginning.  Discretion is the better part of valor, however, if the boss's editorial changes do not alter the message of the text and if he is adamant about being right.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Seems like a lot here are forgetting rule #2.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Evidently, I have forgotten Rule #2.  Please enlighten me.

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Would that be rule #2 from this list:

Rule #1:  The boss is ALWAYS right.

Rule #2:  When the boss is wrong, see rule #1.

clown

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Aaaah!  Thanks for the enlightenment!

RE: starting a sentence with "therefore"

Wabbit--"however" has the same status as "therefore".  

The construction with two independent clauses separated by semicolons is more common, but there's really no big grammatical difference between that and two sentences separated by a period.

I had a friend who had seen "however" so often with a semicolon before and a comma after that he thought that's just the kind of punctuation that goes with "however" regardless of context.  So he'd write things like, "The dog; however, chased the cat."

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

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