Why did language arts/english teachers always tell me not to start a sentence with "because" ?

Starting a book with the word Because.

Starting a greentext with
>Be Gauss

This image offends me because that's actually what a large majority of people think

It makes you look like a shitty bussfeed writer you have seen those bad headlines I know you have.

>So um can we talk about this

Because students are retarded, they thought you would leave the sentence as a dependent clause

They're not wrong for the most part though. English/literature teachers tend to encourage overly specific interpretations instead of actually looking as how a text deals with themes in a broader sense, because either they or those they teach are stupid.

Saying the author meant "the curtains were fucking blue" is generally going to be more accurate than the kinds of 'deep' reading the average high-schooler or high school teacher will produce.

I’m an English teacher and I don’t tell students this, but in my country at least the average English teacher is an illiterate moron who won’t even have an English degree just something ‘related’ like drama or film

They usually give that advice when you're answering short answer questions. If you're answering ten questions and each begins with "because," then you aren't excercising your writing abilities. Within a paragraph, it's fine to begin a sentence with "because."

If your teacher said that you can't begin a sentence within a paragraph with "because," then they don't understand their content area and are parroting what they've heard other teachers say incorrectly. In other words, they are a disgrace to the profession. The are good teachers out there, but many simply like the idea of being a teacher (oftentimes because they never prepared for the real world and teachers were the only authorities they regularly interacted with).

By "sentence fragments", do you mean clauses?

This picture is giving me AIDS.

It's half true though, there is a distinct difference between writing and film.

no one cares what the "author meant"

“A SENTENCE FRAGMENT fails to be a sentence in the sense that it cannot stand by itself. It does not contain even one independent clause. There are several reasons why a group of words may seem to act like a sentence but not have the wherewithal to make it as a complete thought.”
So a dependent clause that was separated from a related complete grammatical sentence would be a fragment.

grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/fragments.htm

it's a guideline for retarded illiterate teenagers
the rule is not "sentences beginning with because are wrong"
the rule is "you are retarded and bad at writing, so and most of the sentences you start with because are probably sentence fragments"

e.g. "I don't like spiders. Because they are scary"

honestly the bs from my hs lit class turned me off to literature for a while b/c it seemed like a race to come up with the dumbest possible explanation

also it was a homeschool class so we debated whether racism should have been extended a little longer

>we debated whether racism should have been extended a little longer

I hope that means what this seems like it means.

yup it does. literally divided the class into two sides. one defended emancipation as it happened, the other said it should have been done differently to ease reconstruction. luckily she put me on the antislavery side. both sides used bible verses in addition to other arguments

Thanks for educating me.

Great link. Thanks.

meant slavery sorry

This picture is dumb, because the author can put things in a work that they don't intented to be there. Writing fiction is mostly subconscious and the writer is unaware of most of the meaning of the text, so what they actually intend isn't the final word. I'm not saying authorial intent doesn't matter at all, just that authors don't remember ever decision they made or are even aware of all the reasons why they make the decisions they do. People who icture novelists as godlike masterminds fully aware of every single word in a text and it's every connotation and symbolic association have never written a novel.

>thinks the author knows what the book means

in all honesty, the writer crafts a scene to fit the mood he wishes to convey.

the curtain were blue because the scene in the book called for it. and the imagery of blue curtains does something to illustrate the inner world of the characters in the scene

Because the world is round it turns me on
Because the world is round, ah

>The curtains were fucking blue.
They weren't though, the curtains aren't real. The author just made them up, and he presumably did so for a reason.

Fuck all my Russian literature teachers for trying so hard to make me hate literature.

Because they are scary, I do not like spiders.

I hate how you're not just allowed to describe a scene, people take brevity as god, every unnecessary word must be eliminated. Description may be unimportant but it's not going to be eliminated because people who read hate fucking reading

That's not really exclusive to english. We are taught the same thing in portuguese, don't know about other languages though.

>Once you understand grammar well enough to understand why it was a good rule, you will not feel any need to ask whether it is ok to ignore.
No, nothing in grammar gives you an idea as to why it should be so. It is an arbitrary style convention.

He said, in laughably ungrammatical constructions

"Because", "In fact", "Actually", "Thus" are used a lot by stemtards, they simply didn't want you to become a hollow shell of a man.

yes this is correct
but it's easier to tell dumb kids not to do it than to explain to them the difference between this sentence and the example you're responding to

back to facebook please.

>Basically
is there a worse word on the planet? that doesn't relate to crime

The author's "reason" for writing a certain word does not matter, unless the book is nonfiction and you are reading it for the purpose of learning from an expert in the field.

In the same way, the opinions of the field laborers in china don't matter when you attempt to read the future from tea leaves at the bottom of your mug. This is about as effective at "finding a greater truth" as analyzing fiction would be, but it doesn't lead to journal publication so it's not worth bothering with.

i think its supposed to be ironic

I wasn't saying the author must've had some deep reason that's the only possible reading, just that the "the curtains were fucking blue" thing makes no sense, because the curtains aren't real (unless the author is in fact describing a real room in excruciating detail).

It's really a matter of context. If the author goes out of their way to mention blue curtains, it's probably for a reason. Other times they may just be dressing a scene to establish atmosphere.
Think about how Frodo in Lotr mentions how heavy the ring is. He doesn't mean it's literally becoming "fucking" heavier, but the burden upon his psyche and soul is being bogged down by it's corrupting influence.

Sure, but establishing atmosphere is still a reason.

Yes, but establishing atmosphere doesn't necessarily have to be accompanied with symbolism or allegory so simply saying that there are blue curtains, along with some other observations, may just be for the simplistic purpose of giving the reader an idea of what the place looks like.
Writers can obviously use this in more in depth ways, like foreshadowing events, or to even represent a characters mood or personality, but the reason may be very superficial, which usually indicates poor writing.

The overly literalistic method of analysing literature is stupid, yeah. Good artists don't make work like it's some fucking crossword puzzle where you have to figure out the 'meaning'. That said, in a good work of literature every word is a choice made by the author. Every piece of information in the text was selected and deliberately put there- a writer isn't a camera who will automatically record every piece of information in front of it.It's not that' the curtains were blue' has a 'meaning' like a code, but different colours, adjectives, nouns have different connotations, whether the writer conciously intends them to or not. Blue combined with other features of a description could combine to evoke peace, or cold, or something else entirely, and the writer might have unconsciously chosen 'blue' because of its connotations. Analysing these aspects is not important to understanding a work of art, or appreciating it. The point of doing this is to understand how minor aspects of art work together to evoke mood in a text, and influence the reader's reactions- useful if you ever want to write something.

The author still has a better idea what he meant to write than some guy who just read about him.

Not really. Most creative people are total idiots. The best ones are completely unaware of the significance of anything in their own work or elsewhere including the real world. The characters in their works might be wise and knowledgeable and insightful, but they themselves are not. Their works are the products of subconscious archetypes or spirits acting through them. The more the author's ego gets in the way of that inspiration, the worse their work will be. I have a theory that the best writers are completely empty vessels who are totally inspired, and the worst are totally uninspired and write as an ego exercise. If you take a egotistical retard who churns out formulaic, pedantic dreck, like say Margaret Atwood, that's a writer who can probably tell you the conscious intent behind every word in every book she's ever written. As a reader, I'm simply not interested in that kind of writing and I don't understand how anyone ever could be.

so good

Nope sweetie, the author is dead.

you guys are worse than child rapists tbqh

Any author who gives such a mundane detail as "the curtains were blue." for no reason other than to randomly tell you what color some curtains are is a pretty terrible author.

>English/literature teachers tend to encourage overly specific interpretations instead of actually looking as how a text deals with themes in a broader sense, because either they or those they teach are stupid.

jesus christ no wonder i was turned off to writing for a few years as a teenager. still kept reading dickens, vonnegut, tolkien, and them but never tried writing because i figured it was out of my reach. worthless scrub teachers ruined my writing career.

on a more productive point, what the fuck have the demand for tax cuts and the low standards of the public education system done. idiocracy is not coming. it is here.

it's for the inevitable movie remake and they want the setting correct. that author really likes fucking blue

Aaaah I see what you're doing here, you're tryna put me in the position of explaining it by starting with because! Epic ruse indeed!

stfu you never had a writing career you scrub

which brainlet made this poster? Also who gives a fuck about what the author meant? You're trying to derive meaning from symbols

>Also who gives a fuck about what the author meant?
Guessing what the author meant is sort of like solving a puzzle. Depending on the author, it may add greatly to the fun of reading. You can also not give a shit about what the author meant and still have fun reading.

Most intelligent reply here.