Starting a sentence with rather than

The sentence, "Rather than describe her to you, I am sending you her picture.", is okay grammatically, but you'd not likely hear this in real speech. "Rather than describe her to you" sounds a little abrupt and rude (you run the risk of this when starting a sentence with "rather than"), so you'd probably say it as: "Rather than trying to describe her, I'm sending a picture." But even this sound

Thank you. Great points.
Would the same hold true for "Instead of" e.g. "Instead of just telling you about our expertise, we are sending you copies of our work that demonstrate our quality."

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I disagree with anonymous.

"Rather than describe her to you, I am sending you her picture" is a perfectly good sentence, with no overtones of rudeness or abruptness whatsoever.

Rover

Ah, thank you. So, I'm safe

Anonymous"Rather than describe her to you, I am sending you her picture.", is okay grammatically,

Anonymous,
Technically, it is incorrect to use the base form of a verb after " rather than" and "instead" because it is usually an adverbial construction, which is non-finite. The correct form therefore is gerund " So, " describing" is what is needed.
i.e.