The article by Michael Schulman in the Jan. 27th New Yorker contains this sentence: “Every house is haunted by its previous residents, but prewar apartments in the Village have particularly colorful ghosts.”
If I were still teaching writing, I would write this sentence on the board to illustrate how the word ‘but’ – an ugly word, one ‘t’ away from one of my least favorite – can often be replaced by ‘and.’ And not just for aesthetic reasons. A ‘but’ tells the reader something significant is coming, often something surprising, in which case the surprise is considerably lessened. An ‘and’ smoothly and seamlessly connects the two parts, leaving the reader unaware until the last delightful moment. ‘But’ is a divider with a spoiler tendency; ‘and’ is a uniter with a subversive streak.
