grammar time

Writing, they say, is more interesting when you shake up your sentence structure. You know, vary sentence length, and begin each sentence with a different type of word, if possible. You may not have noticed, but I've been attempting to do that for the past week. I've tried to commence every post with a different type of word. This post begins with the word "writing": a gerund, yes, but technically a noun. However, yesterday's last post (cocktail review no. 28) began with an article, "a." Before that, random travel destinations kicked off with a conjunction, and School of Hooch (the second round) commenced with a pronoun. Looks like I've avoided falling into a rut so far... Let's keep going back. The last installment of recommended reading starts with a verb, "hadn't." Cocktail review no. 27 starts out with a noun (a great favorite of mine, "humdinger"). Prior to that, in the Pima Air Museum begins with a noun, "I." The post before those (I sez "Chiricahua") starts with a verb, "can." S.A.S.S. and the city begins with a proper noun, "Dad." And the post before that one (across the river and into the cactus) begins with a contraction, "I'm"! Let's take a look at the post before that, champagne and cinnamon rolls. It begins with the word "like." Very versatile word, "like"; a word which can be used for all sorts of stuff. In this case, though, it's used as a preposition in a comparison (I think). Cocktail review no. 26 begins with an adverb! Huzzah! I was hoping one of those would make it in. It's pronounced "twenty-ten" begins with the word "so," which is another versatile word. Seeing as how it connects the title with the first sentence, however, thereby forming a compound sentence, the word "so" functions as a conjunction. Well, that's a bit of variety for you! So let's recap here: 1/5: conjunction 1/6: adverb 1/7 : preposition 1/8 : contraction 1/9 : proper noun 1/10: verb 1/11: noun 1/12: noun 1/13: verb 1/14 (1): pronoun 1/14 (2): conjunction 1/14 (3): article 1/17: gerund (okay, okay, noun; I just like the word "gerund") Except for that little slew of nouns and pronouns there, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. The reason I began keeping track of this, in fact, was because it seemed like most of my posts began with some form of the word "I." I didn't like that. I don't like it when every sentence starts out with the word "I." I think it makes it seem like it's all about me, doesn't it? I can't condone that. I think you might feel the same way. I feel that it might be pretty boring and tedious just sifting through a bunch of posts that start with the word "I," don't you? I wouldn't want to do that. I'd hate it. I'd hate every minute of it. I probably wouldn't ever come back to that blog again, ever. I wouldn't think the person in charge of writing that blog was a very good writer if he began every sentence with the word "I." I would tend to think he's a raging egomaniac. I would say he would've been better off being a modern artist or something fluffy like that. I'd tell him to go get his jollies out elsewhere and not bother the rest of us with his self-centered prattling. I would. I think you should be careful to avoid stumbling into that pitfall. I'd do that if I were you. Or would I?