Starting a sentence with And or But

Like everyone's saying, if it sounds right for the sentence, absolutely do it. Just not too much. Once I was reading this children's chapter book to, well, a child. It had the worst grammar I have ever seen (she said 'worstest' for goodness sake). One of the things that really bothered me was that just about every other sentence started with 'and'. It's never bothered me before and I do it often myself. Just don't do it too much. When people notice it a lot, that's when it's a problem.

GryphonFledgling wrote: never use it on some formal paper for English

Definately. Although, if it's just a little creative writing essay or short story, I like to do it because it adds certain emphasis to the sentence and using alternative words that are inevitably longer always seemed to me to make it drag. But for more formal papers, like Gryphon said, I would advise not doing it.