Learn English – Sentences starting with the preposition “Of”

prepositions

I often see sentences starting with the prepositions "In", "With", "To", and "For".
However, a sentence starting with "Of" seems to be quite rare.
Is that grammatically correct? For example, what about the following complicated sentence?

Of our shelves A, B, C, and D, for B and C, you can take any book from there; for A and D, you cannot.

Best Answer

Of the comments on the question, one is yours and the rest are by other people.

Note that valid sentences of this form can be rearranged:

Of the comments on the question, one is yours and the rest are by other people.

One of the comments on the question is yours and the rest of the comments on the question are by other people.

Because "of the comments on the question" occurs twice, you can bring it to the front. This is rather like factorisation in algebra: ax+bx → x(a+b).

However, to start a sentence with of, that preposition must make sense. In your example sentence, you have also included the prepositions for and from. You have too many prepositions. Any sentence is awkward.

✗ Of our shelves A, B, C, and D, for B and C, you can take any book from there; for A and D, you cannot.

✗ Of our shelves A, B, C and D, you can take any book from B and C; you cannot from A and D.

✓ From our shelves B and C, you can take any book; from shelves A and D, you cannot.

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