My answers are soley based on journalism rules, specifically those of the "journalism" bible, aka the AP Style Book. According to that guide, you never have a common before an "and" in a simple series. You do, however, have one before an "and" with a clause.

Also, it's common in marketing writing to have an "and" at the start of a sentence. Also a "but".

I don't know that a single space after a period is in the AP Style Book, but it is common in many publications (magazines especially) to only have one space after a period.

I just felt my answer to your last question needed a bit of clarification. I picked Not Really, because I sometimes start sentences with "but" or "and" but only in stories never in formal writing.

Ah, the oxford comma. It actually confuses some of my teachers.

I'm a bit in love with the oxford comma, but no one here in Germany uses it. And yes, I mean while writing English. Hee.

I remember when babygotbass mentioned this moons ago and there was wild discussion about the one or two spaces after a period. I, for one, was mortified that many people now use one since I'd always grown up using two. And I just graduated from college last year!

I have a consistancy answer on these, however. I was trained in journalistic standards, which focus on minimizing the amount of space taken up by a block of text. Therefore, I use one space after a period and I don't use the Oxford Comma. Training, see!

do you ever put "and" or "but" at the beginning of a sentence?

I picked "sometimes" but I NEVER do that in professional communication. It's mostly limited to LJ posts.

Isn't the two spaces thing a leftover from typewriting days when doing that made the typed text much easier to read? These days with word processing there's more control over the size of the gap, so I don't think it's that necessary. Depends on preference, I suppose, and your prof shouldn't penalise anyone for his personal preference unless the school has it in their rules for submission of assignments.

The Oxford comma I use off and on. I was told not to do it at school, but I can see that it has a place on occasion.

I always put two spaces in. It's mostly habit; anything that's online is just going to strip it anyway, but I automatically hit the spacebar twice. Your prof is a nutter; consistency is much more important.

Obviously, I use semi-colons all the time. I have since grade seven when I finally figured out what they were for. I NEED my oxford commas. And I think grammar rules are hugely important, but that doesn't mean certain ones are flexible :D

two spacebars, which is annoying when lj eats it. see, i just did it there. semi-colons; sparingly. oxford commas, always, i think. and, uh, and and but (or because!): not in formal essays.

Your professor is stuck in the past; the days of a double-space after a period are long gone.

I would also like to object to the terminology of the last question in your poll; the rule against beginning a sentence with a conjunction is widely believed to be rubbish. Fowler calls the rule an "ungrammatical piece of nonsense," and the view seems to be that so long as the sentence beginning with a conjunction is a complete clause, it's okay. However I wouldn't begin a sentence with a conjunction in formal writing.

In everyday writing, lj posting, etc I only use one period after a sentence, but in school reports I would use two. Same with using "and" or "but" to start a sentence, only in formal papers. I guess that means the grammar police hate me. lol

Yeah, the double space after a period is a definite hangover of the typewriter era when all type was monospaced. With computer processing, most fonts are now proportionally spaced, eliminating the need for the double space. And with the advent of the internets, most browsers only render one space after a period, no matter how many you put in the html. As a graphic designer, I've been drilled to not use double spaces because it creates "rivers" of white spaces throughout the text, and can be very visually distracting. There's a good bit in wiki about it. The debate rages on.

I only do one space after a period; we were simply never taught to do two when we had typing class in school. I hadn't even heard of that rule until I got online. [g]

I learnt to type when I learnt to program as a kid so I never add more than one space. Quite often an extra space can be the one thing that causes a program to eat itself and believe me, there is *nothing* worse than spending hours combing through code to find that you double-spaced in one line. It's so hard to find. Plus, now that fonts are spaced, there's no point - it disrupts the reader's view. (I have this discussion with my flatmate when I edit her essays.)

I use semi-colons occasionally. It's not something I remember learning in school but I do know the usage rules. I probably do use Oxford commas but not because I was taught to use them. I'm just a big coma user.

I won't start a sentence with 'but' but will use 'and'. Just never in a professional/academic situation.

I learned all of my proper English usage from reading antiquated British books and being taught at a Roman Catholic girls' school -- you better believe I leave two spaces after a fullstop. *g*

However, I have a high enough opinion of my own skillz at writing to think that I know when I can begin a sentence with 'and' or 'but'. ahahaha!

*stares* See, when I was learning English, I expected the vocabulary and the grammar to be different. Duh. I got used to idioms that make no sense even if you can translate them perfectly well. I even accepted that the spelling didn't really start to make sense even after I learned how to do it. But no one, in all my years of studying English, ever told me that the punctuation was different, too. Seriously, no teacher ever mentioned anything like that. Even the school books use German puntuation on English texts!

And now suddenly people on the net are hitting me over the head with all those weird new rules I never knew existed -- quotation mark rules that make no sense, the fact that dashes are supposed to look different from hyphens, and now two spaces after a period, and no "and" and "but" at the beginning of a sentence, the hell? -- and I'm flailing helplessly, because this is just coming out of nowhere. English is weird.

Which is a rambly way of saying, I use one space.