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I share the dislike that many people have expressed for starting sentences with symbols. In trying to explain why, I wanted to come up with an example that would illustrate the temptation to do so, but I find it surprisingly hard. Suppose, for instance, that f is so clear from the context that to use Tara's trick and start a sentence with "The function f" would be ridiculous. (In general, by the way, using Tara's trick can add clarity by reminding the reader what is what, so I am talking about a special circumstance here.) Now suppose that we want to say something about f, such as that it is a homomorphism. It is very hard to think of a natural context in which one would actually want to start a sentence with "f is a homomorphism". Nearly always there would be a reason for saying that, or a justification for it, such as, "It is not hard to check that", or "We have already seen that". And if it came out of the blue somewhere, then one would want to signal a slight change of subject with a word such as "Now" (a trick that has already been mentioned). So I'm tempted to say that if your prose is flowing properly the problem shouldn't arise, or should arise very infrequently.