I’d like them to be able to apply these skills to all kinds of prose.
“For” means the same thing in all the cases I cited, however literary, poetic, literal, or academic their tones may have been.
Hey, knock yourself out. If I were taking that test, I’d be thrown by the seemingly incomplete sentence and probably get that one wrong. And the pizza one.
(I see what I did there.)
That was my take on it too.
Well… you shouldn’t be.
It happens in quality English prose. And you’re telling me it throws you for a loop. Should that be happening, if you know how to read quality English prose?
I don’t mean this as an insult. I mean it as a sort of round-about argument that you may in fact be wrong about how you read.
Of course you understand all the sentences I cited, and you understand them immediately. They don’t throw you at all.
So I can’t see why this one should have thrown you. For it’s an instance of exactly the kind of thing you see all the time assuming you actually do read much. (And I assume you do.)
No one’s saying that you cannot start a complete sentence with the word “for.” For example, this is a complete sentence. For certain situations, it’s the perfect way to start a sentence.
#4 wasn’t a complete sentence.
Is this a class in writing or reading comprehension or logic?
I posted three cites that said that subordinated clauses cannot stand alone as sentences. I also allowed that you do see it in stylistically odd writing such as Vonnegut and in conversational pieces.
I think it’s odd enough to leave it out of a test like that, but you can include whatever you want in your tests, of course.
ETA: In response to Frylock, of course.
I didn’t say that anyone said that you can’t start a complete sentence with the word “for.” I was referring, as is everyone else, to the non-prepositional use of “for”.
#4 consists in two complete sentences. I’m going to be somewhat dogmatic about this, so I’m not sure what your best response can be.
Perhaps I can give a little by saying the following. There may be some standard out there according to which a sentence beginning with “for” (non-prepositional, since I apparently need to clarify that) is an incomplete sentence. But it is not the standard which applies to quality English prose in general, and it’s not the standard that applies to everyday written or spoken English either. I am trying to teach my students something about how to handle both quality English prose, and everyday written and spoken English as well. Since the standard you guys are using does not apply to either of these domains, the standard you guys are using is irrelevant to my interests–and my students’.
My response to Amarinth also applies as a response to this post as well.
I think it odd to leave out of a test like mine a common construction with implications for the logic of passages, even (or perhaps especially) on the grounds that the construction breaks rules listed at the websites you cited. Who cares if it breaks those rules? It is nevertheless consistently used across a variety of contexts, and the meaning it is consistently given in these uses is directly relevant to figuring out what the logical structure (of the passages they’re embedded in) in fact is.
ETA: In response to RitterSport, well then, don’t you see?
Frylock, none of your examples have ‘for’ starting a clause that stands alone as a sentence - they’re all using ‘for’ as a subordinate clause within a longer sentence. That is a perfectly ordinary way to write.
Your example had a subordinate clause on its own as a standalone sentence; that is not an ordinary way to write.
@RT: yup, the first two (in your post at the top of this page) are subordinate clauses, the third one isn’t. That’s perfectly normal in dialogue - there’s an implied main clause.
Posts 67 and 68 serve as a response to this post as well.
I don’t know what “ordinary” means exactly when you say it here, but importantly, it’s a “way to write” which can be found often enough in quality English prose that educated people can (and should be able to) interpret it automatically, understanding its meaning without having to puzzle anything out.
Frylock, you don’t seem to be reading what people are saying: starting a sentence with ‘for’ is not the problem, it’s having a sentence which consists only of a subordinate clause that is the problem.
‘For’ is a subordinating conjunction that begins a subordinate clause; subordinate clauses do not make grammatically complete standalone sentences. This is not my opinion - this is a fact*.
By ‘ordinary’ I mean ‘English which is being written in a way that’s intended to be grammatically standard for its country, not slang, dialect or poetic phrasing.’
*At least, as far as language ever has facts - it’s not like Newton’s Third Law or anything.
What makes you think I don’t understand this? I’m talking about the same thing you are–use of the word “for” at the beginning of a sentence when “for” isn’t a preposition.
Are there cases where “for” is used neither as a preposition nor as the head of a* subordinate clause?
*ahem “so-called”
Find that fact in a Linguistics textbook or a Linguistic Grammar.
Anyway really the whole discussion about whether it’s a “complete sentence” or not is moot. The fact is, the string of symbols “. For” is one that people who read quality English prose will encounter from time to time. People who are expected to read that prose, then, should be ready to interpret that string correctly without having to puzzle it out. Wouldn’t you agree?
I’m voting for “not at all tricky.”
Well I think the one that starts with “for every dog with three legs” has turned out to be more open to interpretation than I intended. So I’m leaving it out of the pool next time.
Most of the other confusions people have expressed in this thread involved not understanding what the instructions meant, which AFAIK wasn’t the problem for my students, if only because in class we did example after example exactly like this in class. As a result of this, they probably don’t even read the instructions anymore. 
Then there’s the whole question of whether “For my dog has many fleas” and “For you see, my dog has many fleas” are complete sentences or not. That’s a tangent to the question of the OP.
This is why I think you don’t understand this:
I say that you can’t have a subordinate clause as an ordinary standalone sentence, and for begins a subordinate clause.
You disagree. You claim you’ve seen this in many books.
I challenge you to look in a few books and find examples.
You post examples which have nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Your examples are all of a subordinate clause within a longer sentence that includes a main clause.
Someone else points out that subordinate clauses do make grammatically-complete sentences (except in poetic ways and in some dialogue), and provides cites.
You continue to insist you’re right.
That’s why it appears that you don’t know what a subordinate clause is. That’s fine - it’s like we’re born with this knowledge; we all have to learn at some point. However, if you are teaching this stuff, it really would be best if you knew what you were talking about.
Wow. No they’re not.
Each sentence I typed as a citation consists entirely in a single (though sometimes quite long) example of what you’re calling a “subordinate clause.”
“For it isn’t, either, as if he had arrived at his proposition by pursuing some line of thought which, while it is open to me, I have not in fact pursued.”
Winnowing out various unnecessary clauses this reduces to
“For it isn’t as if he had arrived at his proposition by pursuing some line of thought.”
That’s a “subordinate clause” if anything is. If that has a main clause, then “For my dog has fleas” has a main clause.
The Shoemaker cite is even clearer:
“For on other views of the nature of personal identity it is easy to give an account of why continuity of brain and memory should be evidence of it.”
which reduces to
“For it is easy to give an account.”
That’s a subordinate clause if anything is. If that has a main clause, then so does “For my dog has fleas.”
The passage from the novel is obviously an example of what you’re calling a subordinate clause. (“For he hadn’t been accepted yet.”)
You may think I winnowed out too much and lost something of the main structure of these sentences. I invite you, if that’s the case, to tell me what the main clause of each original sentence was.
OK, I give up. I know this is the Straight Dope, but I’m not in the mood for this level of ignorance-fighting today. Someone else will come along and help you soon, I’m sure.