Start may have the connotation of being in the future and beginning may more easily be associated with the past. The period will start in 15 minutes. vs I can barely remember the beginning of the period. Start has the sense of being a fixed point in time, while beginning could possibly refer to any time between the start and the halfway point.
Are both expressions "At the beginning" "In the beginning" valid and equivalent? The first "seems wrong" to me, but it has more Google results.
word choice - "At the beginning" or "in the beginning"? - English ...
The beginning of the century is a period of time which is short compared to the century but rather long otherwise; Some people may use this phrase to mean the first decade or even longer.
"At the beginning of the century" or "in the beginning of the century"?
Sentences beginning with hence, thus, and therefore are extremely common in academic writing. Searching COCA for a period followed by thus gets a staggering 23,086 hits! Such sentences even occur on the Chicago Manual of Style web site: Hence a car owned by John and Jim can be expressed as “John and Jim’s car.”
Begin at the beginning, the King said, very gravely, and go on till you come to the end: then stop. The "go on in till you come to the end" seems to suggest hard work and determination till you reach your goal. But I feel I'm missing a few nuances here—in particular, the significance of "gravely" and "stop". How would you interpret this quote?