Please Stop Starting Your Sentences with “However” (except in certain cases)

“In the 1960s, the California State Water Project, conceived and built during the administration of Governor Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown, was designed to guarantee adequate water for the rapidly growing Southland well into the twenty-first century. However, since the California Aqueduct carried more water than Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District (Met) customers could use in the short run, valley growers persuaded the Met to sell them the surplus for the energy cost of delivery.”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Today I spent my morning revisiting Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Nevertheless, as I read the above passage—part of a discussion on the 1902 Federal Reclamation Act and the exploitation of water legislation by corporations in California—my positive disposition waned. Instead of being immersed in Gilmore’s adept portrayal of exploitation and injustice in the California carceral system, I found myself fixating on her use of the word ‘however.’

Today, many view syntax guidelines as archaic and irrelevant rules rather than tools for effective communication. Few, besides myself, find enjoyment in perusing William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style or the Chicago Manual of Style for fun. This means that they miss section 5.204 of the manual and page 48 of Strunk and White’s:

“As a matter of style, however is more effectively used within a sentence to emphasize the word or phrase that precedes it. Many highly accomplished writers shun the sentence-starting however as a contrast word. Yet the word is fine in that position in the ‘in whatever way’ (not followed by a comma)”

Chicago Manual of Style, 5.204

“Avoid starting a sentence with however when the meaning is ‘nevertheless.’ The word usually serves better when not in first position. When however comes first, it means ‘in whatever way’ or ‘to whatever extent.’”

Strunk and White

Unfortunately, most people remain unaware of these nuances; some grammar-checking software even suggests replacing ‘nevertheless’ with the incorrect ‘however.’ This is an epidemic we MUST address. While it might not constitute a specific grammatical error, matters of syntax and optimal sentence construction are equally pressing.

So please, for my sanity, stop using however in the place of nevertheless.