Time and sentences

Here's an interesting article about steampunk--

One of the little things we edit for is time sequence in sentences. Usually (not always, but remember that we want to establish the convention so the unconventional can stand out and be important), you want the sentence and the action to proceed in the same direction, so the reader doesn't have to puzzle out what happened first. The order of the sentence should make that clear.

Again, there are times where you want to dislocate the reader and make her stop and puzzle out what you mean. However, you don't want that when you don't want that. Don't puzzle the reader when you really just want the reader to read on and accumulate what's happening and make sense of it without stopping.

So notice that when you have:
Before he caught Rover, he put on his running shoes after taking off his loafers. Then he chased the dog down the street.
...you're likely to get a "huh?" from the reader, and a momentary rejiggering of events:
"Oh. Okay. First he took off his loafers. Then he put on his running shoes. Then he chased the dog down the street. THEN he caught Rover. Got it."
Now notice, all those events really happened, and they happened in a sequence (just not the one in the sentence :).

I'm thinking that you might want to have a breach in sequence when the connection is causal:
Before he stepped into the street, he looked both ways.
That is, presumably the first event is that he realizes he's about to step into the street, SO he looks both ways. So we might want to have the cause (the imminence of stepping) before the effect (looking both ways).

Also, all intent is not to be fulfilled. "Before" implies a potentiality, and that means something might not happen. And in that case, the "before" which never happens will work at the beginning:
Before she could stop him, he'd run into the street.

But, again, the subtleties of sentence are preserved when you reserve them for when you actually want that meaning. So I try not to mess with sequence unless I mean it.

Here's a sentence similar one I recently edited. (Don't count on the editor to catch and fix these. Make your sentences mean what you want to mean.)
She went into the kitchen and started cooking but only after he first stopped her to tell her about all his many food allergies.
Unless there's a reason not to, assemble the sentence elements chronologically.
Alicia