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In the 1950s we were strongly discouraged from placing prepositions at the end of sentences, and also from using split infinitives. Is this considered important now?

WS2
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    Why, I ask with incredulity, has someone voted this down? and left no comment. Is this not important? If you want to delight your readers with wonderful English prose, this is a question which needs your thought and attention. – WS2 Oct 13 '13 at 21:36
  • I can only guess, as the downvote wasn't mine, but some of our fellow ELU enthusiasts seem to bristle at questions of a prescriptive nature. I believe some of the answers and comments here illustrate the point effectively. – Lumberjack Oct 13 '13 at 21:42
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    Today on the BBC, the chief vexillologist of the UK weighed in on the long-standing controversy between people who call the UK's flag the "Union Jack" and people who call it the "Union Flag". The official position? Get over it - there never was a rule until the Victorians (who had to have rules about everything) decided to make one. Many language nitpicks (such as dangling prepositions and split infinitives) came out of the same misguided fussiness, and should also be ditched. If obeying the "rule" makes your writing awkward or unclear, forget the rule! – MT_Head Oct 13 '13 at 22:16
  • @MT_Head I didn't see it, but I do hope they had the flag the right way up. My friend went into a shop in Germany to ask if he could be of any help in their distress. The shop people didn't realise they were flying the Union Jack/Flag, among many other flags, the wrong way up - a signal of 'in distress'. – WS2 Oct 13 '13 at 22:24
  • @WS2 - It was "Broadcasting House" on Radio 4, so I didn't actually "see" it either... – MT_Head Oct 13 '13 at 22:25
  • 'Twas not I who downvoted, but I can understand someone getting annoyed with people not bothering to check if the question (and there are two here, another no-no) has been addressed before. They have. More than once. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 13 '13 at 22:28
  • It never did matter. It’s pure prescriptivist poppycock, and as such, even contempt is too good for it. – tchrist Oct 14 '13 at 01:29
  • This question appears to be off-topic because this is merely a peeve is a thinly veiled disguise, and we don’t do peeves or peevers here. – tchrist Oct 14 '13 at 01:30

5 Answers5

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It depends who is doing the considering. Almost all academic linguists recognise that these "rules" have no historical authority but were arbitrarily invented a couple of hundred years ago. Most modern style-guides have abandoned the one about prepositions, and are prepared to allow split infinitives if the alternative would be awkward or ambiguous.

But you will certainly find curmudgeons about who insist on these "rules"; and of course if any such curmudgeon encounters your prose which doesn't follow their cherished rules, they will judge you as inferior.

Colin Fine
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  • My own view is that the rules were introduced for very good reason. 'To boldly go where no one has gone before' is an abortion of a sentence to have to hear repeated ad nauseam. English that is a joy to read contains neither of the elements I mention. – WS2 Oct 13 '13 at 22:15
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    +1 I totally agree with Colin, with two quibbles: (1) 'English grammarians' instead of 'academic linguists'; (2) peevers (language curmudgeons, as described) may be safely ignored, since they illustrate their ignorance by their peeve. – John Lawler Oct 13 '13 at 22:18
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    However, it would be incorrect to say that stranded prepositions and split infinitives don't matter any longer. They never did matter, as a matter of grammar, and they still don't matter. At all. – John Lawler Oct 13 '13 at 22:22
  • @John Lawler But I believe they matter to the beauty of the sound which comes out, and that was the reason for the rule in the first place. Think how much nicer it sounds to say 'Boldly to go where no man has gone before', or even 'To go boldly where no man has gone before'. But 'to boldly go'- yuk. – WS2 Oct 13 '13 at 22:29
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    @WS2, you believe incorrectly. These ‘rules’ were applied to English for the sole reason that they exist in French and Latin. They have nothing to do with English and never had. ‘To boldly go’ is only ugly to you because that’s what you were taught it was. Dozens of great 18th century writers whose writings only a fool would dismiss with a “Yuk” split their infinitives quite freely. And sometimes, there simply is no alternative: “The population is expected to more than double” cannot be ‘fixed’ by un splitting the infinitive. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 13 '13 at 22:41
  • @Janus: Google Ngrams actually seems to show that the split infinitive (unlike the terminal preposition) is a relatively recent grammatical innovation. But I don't see any reason this particular grammatical innovation should be singled out for opprobrium. – Peter Shor Oct 13 '13 at 22:56
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    @WS2:
    There are times when ending a sentence with a preposition seems unavoidable. How would you rewrite Shakespeare's sentence "I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at" so the sentence doesn't end with a preposition? "I will wear my heart upon my sleeve so that daws can peck at it"? Much clunkier. Yuck!     – Peter Shor Oct 13 '13 at 22:59
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    @PeterShor, they've been around since late Middle English, so I wouldn't call them recent. True, they went out of fashion, apparently, for quite a long time—but then they came back with a vengeance in the 1700s, and have been in frequent use ever since. They were previously more colloquial, but I don't think that really applies anymore—people either use them indiscriminately these days, or they continue to believe the prescriptivist nonsense they were fed by their grammar school teachers and don't use them at all. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 13 '13 at 23:03
  • @JohnLawler Fortunately the new flexible close options include one for *“Closed due to pointless and puerile peeving about pathetically prescriptivist poppycock”*, which I have duly invoked (along with the requisite Language Log link). May others go and do likewise. – tchrist Oct 14 '13 at 01:34
  • @Peter Shor. I shall not try to improve on Shakespeare, though he did extensively murder the rules of English grammar. Our modern rules, that is. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 08:18
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    @WS2: Since you admit that it wasn't a rule in Shakespeare's time, and since people have been putting prepositions at the end of sentences continuously ever since then, where did this rule come from? What are the reasons for it? – Peter Shor Oct 14 '13 at 11:40
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet what's wrong with, 'The population is expected more than to double'. That is how I would say it. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 14:25
  • @ Peter Shor Well in Shakespeare's time there was no law saying you couldn't beat your wife with a stick. I just happen to believe that the Victorians did us massive favours, not only in creating a standard English but in vast other fields like establishing a police force and stopping people beating others with sticks. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 14:30
  • @WS2: "The population is expected more than to double" ... you might say it that way, but hardly anybody else would. See Google Ngram. I guess the rest of the English-speaking world is entirely wrong. – Peter Shor Oct 14 '13 at 16:27
  • @Peter Shor What I will do, 'MORE THAN TO ARGUE the point' is quote to you the motto of the University of East Anglia, spoken in the Norfolk idiom. It is 'Do different!'. Being a Norfolk bloke it is not the first time I have 'done different'. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 16:32
  • @WS2, your version is not ungrammatical, but to me it makes no sense. It says that there are two things that are expected: ‘the population’ and ‘to double’. Of these two things, the former is expected more than the latter. Similarly, “to double is expected more than the population” is grammatically valid, but semantically perhaps even more bizarre. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 14 '13 at 16:50
  • @Jens Bahs Jacquet: not quite "the sole reason". A lot of these rules seem to have been invented in order to sell grammar books: if your grammar had more rules in, it was obviously better (nobody actually spelt out that it was better because it enabled you to sneer at more people). If you could give the rules a veneer of authority by saying they came from a dead language with high prestige, so much the better. – Colin Fine Oct 14 '13 at 23:06
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English has pre-positions ("We looked at the books") and post-positions (The books we looked at"). Why forbid the second ones ?

As for split infinitive, "Writers should learn to not split infinitives".

ex-user2728
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    I must say, that's an interesting way to look at it. +1 for creativity. – John Lawler Oct 13 '13 at 23:07
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    Though this (paragraph 1) is a classic example of begging the question (= assuming the answer you want in a sneakily-disguised premise). Not that I'm not arguing with the answer here. Another point: this is not the usual usage of 'postposition' ('A word that shows the relation of a noun or pronoun to some other word/s in a sentence, similar in function to a preposition, but [immediately] following rather than preceding the object: these facts notwithstanding). This example would rather be described as a case of preposition stranding – Edwin Ashworth Oct 14 '13 at 11:33
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It depends on how formal you want to be. If you're writing a speech for a large educated group - let's say college professors at a conference - then you'd follow both rules.

The infinitive thing is a carryover from Latin, in which the infinitive is a single word ("amare", to love). In Latin, you couldn't split it if you wanted to. When things started to be translated from Latin, they noticed that you always wrote "to be" for "esse" (for eample), and somebody decided that it would be bad form to write put anything between the "to" and the verb.

As it's a rule that no longer makes sense, we ignore it.

As for the ending preposition, Winston Churchill was one of the finest writers in modern England. When someone tried to correct him - ending a sentence with a preposition - he replied

"This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put."

(Versions of that story vary.)

Again, I think it comes from Latin, where the preposition is always in front of the phrase.

English is, however, a living language. That's why we have so many words - we borrow as needed from other languages.

ZZMike
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  • Interesting that you should say Churchill was 'one of the finest writers in modern England' Well he did have a pithy way with words, having begun as a journalist. But not to be mentioned with our finest writers of his period, such as D.H.Lawrence, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and William Golding. But if you ever want an example of how to write a letter of condolence, read his to Eleanor Roosevelt on the death of FDR. It is just a few lines long but says absolutely everything. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 07:54
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Split infinitives and terminal prepositions have a tendency to add complexity and ambiguity to a sentence, or help reduce them.

Your current attitude should be - does their use in a particular situation increase or decrease comprehension?

For example I encountered this rather confusing advertising phrase (for a telecom product) in Singapore many years ago.

Which line would you rather be at the end of?

It could be rewritten as

At which end of a line would you rather be?

Perhaps, to emphasize differentiation of one product line from another

At the end of which line would you rather be?

However, this phrase with a terminal preposition,

Whom do you think I should be working for?

is more comprehensible than one without,

For whom do you think I should be working?

Whilst (does anyone still use the word "whilst"?),

For Whom the Bells Toll

sounds much better than

Whom the Bells Toll For

These sound so much more grammatically refreshing,

Would you like me to set your equipment up before your demo tomorrow.
Remember to pick the groceries up from the shop this evening.

But, these sound more comprehensible and get the job done.

Would you like me to set up your equipment before your demo tomorrow.
Remember to pick up the groceries from the shop this evening.

Blessed Geek
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  • I much prefer 'For whom do you think I should be working?' and others. My English teacher, over half a century ago used to say,'Beware of trailing prepositions, up with which I shall not put'. – WS2 Oct 13 '13 at 22:44
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    The last two examples deal with the preposition’s syntactic status (as part of a phrasal verb construction or not); they are not really relevant to this question. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 13 '13 at 22:44
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    @WS2, hopefully, as he did so, you all realised that that sentence is completely ungrammatical? – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 13 '13 at 22:46
  • I simply thought that the infinitive-unsplit-from-preposition issue deserves an equal amount of thought. Not only so, unsplit-preposition phrases beget from the same controversy as terminal prepositions and are therefore, similar issues. – Blessed Geek Oct 13 '13 at 22:53
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    It's an option, not a political party or a corporation. Must one give "equal amount of thought" to every loony idea one comes across? That seems a depressingly egalitarian way to allocate thought modules. – John Lawler Oct 13 '13 at 23:11
  • Your second example ("At which end of a line would you rather be?") has a completely different meaning than the other two "line" examples. – Izkata Oct 14 '13 at 00:49
  • .... I know .... – Blessed Geek Oct 14 '13 at 02:11
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    Hemingway's title "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a quotation, so I don't think euphony enters the question there. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 14 '13 at 03:11
  • "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put." —Who am I? – Talia Ford Oct 14 '13 at 06:33
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet. How is it ungrammatical? – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 08:00
  • People comment as if writing the English language was a chore. I always test the best place to put prepositions and rather enjoy doing so, and try to take pride in the end result. People undervalue the inheritance they have been given of this highly expressive language. Love your words! – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 08:04
  • @WS2, you cannot front a phrasal-verb adverb like that. At least not in my variety of English. “The amount of money into which he’s recently come is quite substantial” does not mean the same as “The amount of money he’s come into…”. The ‘up with which I shall not put’ quote is and has always been meant to show that blindly fronting prepositions is not always possible. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 14 '13 at 08:06
  • Well they seem to have an identical meaning to me. But the verb 'come into' meaning money is a bit colloquial anyway. In a situation such as that I would use a different expression. Inherited? – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 08:13
  • Than a mere moment, me you should bear with a little more, for such triviality no longer up with which I shall put. – Blessed Geek Oct 14 '13 at 08:14
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Yes, they matter. Sometimes. And sometimes they don't.

The anti-prescriptivists say that such rules are arbitrary, nothing to with English(!), and should be ignored. While doing so they obey a whole load of other rules, so this position doesn't stand up logically: it is cherry-picking which rules are prescriptive and which are not.

The prescriptivists say that all rules should be obeyed regardless, and failure to do so is dumbing down the language, a failure of education, etc. They usually believe that the Golden Age of Grammar was when they were in school. This too doesn't stand up logically as they have to prove that their set of rules is correct and, for example, 17th century rules are not.

Somebody, somewhere, said something like "rules are for the adherence of the ignorant and the guidance of the wise". Maybe that should be applied here.

The 'arbitrary' rules that 'have nothing to do with English' were codified by Englishman who were very well educated and knew more about the language than those who currently whine about them. They are there for a reason, and to arbitrarily dismiss them makes no sense. On the other hand, there is no reason why those who understand the purpose of the rules should not break them.

"To boldly go", for example, is harmless enough and improves the prosody, at least to my ear. "To go boldly" as prescriptivists would insist is comparatively clunky, and as the purpose of not splitting infinitives is to keep the to- and its verb together (not a bad idea) splitting with a single short word doesn't really violate that.

Compare with "to boldly with phasers set to stun, transporter at the ready, and Bones hanging around with his tricorder, go" is almost unintelligible but presumably okay to those who say splitting infinitives is awesome.

In short, the rules themselves are not wrong. The issue is people who either apply them religiously, or on the other extreme think they should be ignored completely.

Roaring Fish
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  • Even the prescriptivists do not say we should follow the rules about shall and will, about you and thou, and about the present subjunctive. Language changes, and there is nothing wrong with arbitrarily dismissing rules that no longer have relevance. The rule about the split infinitive is one of these; it was introduced in the 19th century, when split infinitives were becoming popular again after several hundred years of being out of use (or more likely, being used only by regional dialects). – Peter Shor Oct 14 '13 at 11:44
  • The present subjunctive is alive and kicking in formal writing, and so is the will/shall distinction - especially in British legalese. You are making the mistake of thinking that what happens in America - where the will/shall distinction has never been strong - must be happening all over the world. The split infinitive being no longer relevant is your personal opinion, not a fact, which is precisely why the anti-prescriptivist position has no logical basis. The decision of what is relevant and what isn't is completely arbitrary. – Roaring Fish Oct 14 '13 at 17:08
  • If the present subjunctive be alive and kicking, then I am very unobservant, since I never see it anywhere. – Peter Shor Oct 20 '13 at 21:17
  • I can only conclude that you don't read much formal writing. – Roaring Fish Oct 21 '13 at 08:58