What is the meaning of of when it starts a sentence? For example,
and what is the grammatically correct way to write a sentence starting with of?
Answer
If we take your specimen text,
The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now
it is apparent that it is semantically one sentence that has been turned into one sentence plus two sentence fragments for rhetorical effect. (The main verb that makes gives meaning to the two sentence fragments is contained in the sentence that begins the sequence of statements.) It could as easily have been presented thus:
The thing I’m most afraid of is me: of not knowing what I’m going to do; of not knowing what I’m doing right now
In the second version, we can see that what follows the colon is a continuation or extension of the primary statement,
The thing I’m most afraid of is me:
where
of not knowing what I’m going to do; of not knowing what I’m doing right now
provide the specific justifications for saying “The thing I’m most afraid of is me”.
The fragmentary presentation of the first version of the text is presumably intended to increase the impact of the justifications. It achieves this by forcing the reader to slow down at each period/full stop, and to consider each justification separately.
At the same time, it also emphasizes the rhythmic repetitiveness of the statements, with each successive statement building on and amplifying the previous one, like a drum that gets a little louder with each new beat.
Here, I would say it is being used pretty effectively.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Naing Lin Aung , Answer Author : Erik Kowal
