If you need relief from too many sentences beginning with “but,” switch to “however.” It is, however, a weaker word and needs careful placement. Don’t start a sentence with “however”—it hangs there like a wet dishrag. And don’t end with “however”—by that time it has lost its howeverness. Put it as early as you reasonably can, as I did three sentences ago. Its abruptness then becomes a virtue. “Yet” does almost the same job as “but,” though its meaning is closer to “nevertheless.” Either of those words at the beginning of a sentence—“Yet he decided to go” or “Nevertheless he decided to go”—can
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