The Word “But”

The word but is a common conjunction, along with “and,” “or,” and other words. As in “I know I can’t afford it, but I want to buy it anyway.”

When I had kids, I composited a word “Yeahbut.” I would ask him or her if he or she heard me tell him or her to clean up his or her room, He or she would say, “Yeahbut, Dad, . . . . “ Fill in the blank. Many people, including teenagers, suffer from a serious case of the “yeahhbuts.”

I generally don’t like to use conjunctions. I’d rather make two sentences, as in: “I know I can’t afford it. I want to buy it anyway.”

The thing about “but” is it totally negates whatever came before it. That makes the second part of the sentence the most important part of the sentences. Or this one: “I went to the store, but there was no toilet paper.” Logically, the speaker wouldn’t have known there was no toilet paper if he hadn’t gone to the store. So why should that part of the experience be negated? How about: “There wasn’t any toilet paper at the store.” Or maybe, “There wasn’t any toilet paper at the store by the time I got there.”

So you can see how you can say the same thing different ways, all grammatically correct, depending on what you want to mean.

I should blog more often, but I get lazy sometimes.