> There is no rule but has some exceptions.

It's tagged "old-fashioned", but is this even a valid sentence?


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> There is no rule but has some exceptions.

I think the basic structure "There is no X but has Y" would have been valid in Shakespeare's time. His play "King Lear" contains the line "For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass," which basically means "No matter how beautiful a woman is, she will make faces at herself in a mirror." However, nowadays, when "but" is used in a similar way, it is almost always followed directly by a noun phrase.

By contrast, the "has some exceptions" part of the sentence feels like a more modern formulation. Though I'm not enough of an expert on Shakespearean language to make a definitive statement, the combination of the two kinds of English makes me uncomfortable. That, together with the fact that the sentence is unowned, leads me to think I should adopt and change it.


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# This comment was copied from #326036 when duplicate sentences were merged.
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Duplicates of this sentence have been deleted:
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