KING JAMES AND ME: A RANT

This year is the four hundredth anniversary of the King James version of the bible. Thousands, probably millions, of words have been written about the KJB, but the overwhelming opinion is that it's pretty nifty stuff.

And far be it from me to disagree.

But, you see, that last sentence (and this one) would be banned from pretty much any book written for use in schools.
And so would And they all lived happily ever after - in fact, I've tried to include that very sentence in a piece of educational fiction and it HAS been banned. Well, tweaked, anyway.

The rule of the educational consultants is that no sentence can ever start with AND or BUT.

Why? No idea at all.

So, back to the King James Bible, so widely praised for the excellence of its prose. Well, let's have a look at the first ten sentences of that great book. The first sentence starts, of course, In the beginning. And the next nine sentences? Yes, all of them begin with AND. And so, as it happens, so do the next fifteen, as well.

I rest my case.

Rule to break today: use a sentence beginning with AND!

By the way, that prune contranym from yesterday. Does STONED mean with the stone or without? Probably without, I'd say - but I would bite with caution, all the same.