From: Beverly Derewianka					Composed: 10/17/2001 04:16:05 PM
Subject: so/therefore

Hello Fanny. Good to hear from you again.

I'll have a go at answering the first question here and then tackle the others. You ask:

In the following text, besides using 'Therefore', can we also use 'so' ?

' Although Toronto is a large place, it does not have [as?] many people as in Hong Kong. Most of the people live uptown but work downtown. THEREFORE lots of people have to travel from the uptown to the downtown every day. '

# Is it better to start a sentence with 'therefore' than with 'so' ? However, I feel that it's also acceptable to use 'so' to begin a sentence, as in the case above. Am I right ?

Yes, you could use either 'so' or 'therefore'.
'So' is a conjunction and has to come at the beginning of the clause. 'Therefore' is an adverb (conjunctive) and can be moved around the clause (eg 'Lots of people therefore have to ...'). Although both are correct, it is probably more common in formal written language to use 'therefore'.

Hope this helps,

Bev