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Possible Duplicate:
When is it okay to end a sentence in a preposition?

I see it a lot, even though my elementary teacher told me it is wrong. This is probably a new development, a sign that our language is in decay. Soon none of us will be able to understand each other. But this sloppiness is a disaster, up with which I will not put.

What are your own experiences with this terrible phenomenon? How may we roll it back? Should moderators strike out at such language abuse? What do you do to correct your friends, family, and colleagues? Do you leave them notes, too? Voice mails? Should all existing literature be corrected and republished as well, the old editions burned?

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Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
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  • Isn't it the 2nd already where you live? – Marthaª Apr 02 '11 at 03:25
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    My favorite example of ending with five prepositions. Mother, what did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for? (Not my own, but I can't remember the reference.) – Spare Oom Apr 02 '11 at 03:29
  • @Martha: 1. I was trying to fit in with your New-Worldliness; 2. it didn't seem as appropriate until I got home just now, which might somehow be related to certain carbohydrates. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 02 '11 at 03:29
  • @SpareOom: Burn your comment shall! – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 02 '11 at 03:30
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    possible duplicate of When is it okay to end a sentence in a preposition?. Sorry, @Cerberus, but I am voting to close this. Read @nohat's excellent response to the linked question. The prejudice against ending sentences with a preposition is a silly shibboleth that ought to die. I leave you with a quote from Robert Browning: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” Notice anything about the last word in that sentence? – Robusto Apr 02 '11 at 03:43
  • @Robusto: While I agree that the questions are related, I think calling them exact duplicates is a bit too far... they are asking for different things. – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:23
  • @Billy ONeal: The accepted answer for the other question already explains there is nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition. When the same answer applies to another question, that question is considered a duplicate. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 04:30
  • @kiamlaluno: No, that's not true. Just because the same answer applies doesn't mean the question is the same. The question is different. – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:32
  • @kiamlaluno: For example: "Where can I buy milk?" -> "The corner store." "Where can I buy eggs?" -> "The corner store.". The questions are very different but the answer is exactly the same. – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:34
  • @Billy ONeal: Your example doesn't apply here; both the questions are about sentence endings with prepositions. The only difference in this question is the part asking how to fix the phenomenon; as in English there is nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition, there isn't nothing to fix at all. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 04:46
  • @kiamlaluno: Okay, then you think the questions are similar enough to be duplicates, that's fine. But "the answers are the same" is not justification -- that's my whole point here. :) – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:48
  • @Billy ONeal: I am just saying in which cases a question is considered a duplicate on SE sites. It happened to me too, to ask a question which has been marked as duplicated because the answer to another question already answered to mine. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 04:49
  • @kiamlaluno: Then your question either was similar enough to the other question that it should have been closed, or it was closed wrongly. I see this "the answers are the same" justification quite a bit on SE sites, and it's completely wrong (as my simple example above illustrates). – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:53
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    Y'all realize this is (1) an April Fool's question (2) posted by a, shall we say, tipsy 3-headed puppy? – Marthaª Apr 02 '11 at 04:57
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    @Martha: One hour ago was already April 2, for me. It should be April 2 for Cerberus, and in New York too. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 05:01
  • @kiamlaluno, see above about (2) tipsy. – Marthaª Apr 02 '11 at 05:02
  • @Martha: Nope -- had no idea. @kiamlaluno: Asked a question on Meta.SE about this -- hopefully that'll clear things up a bit. – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 05:02
  • @Billy ONeal: It was closed because the topic of my question was the same of the other question, and the accepted answer already explained what I was asking for; it's the same case for this question. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 05:06
  • @Martha: Then the question is a tipsy duplicate. – apaderno Apr 02 '11 at 05:09
  • @Cerberus Your last question is not one I'm going to supply an answer to. –  Aug 04 '12 at 11:51
  • @DavidWallace: You're just going to burn them right now? – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Aug 04 '12 at 14:53
  • .............Sassy – Edwin Ashworth Jul 17 '14 at 08:43
  • @EdwinAshworth: Thank you. You too, when you're in the mood. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jul 18 '14 at 00:00

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I remember hearing the same rule. However, according to Oxford Dictionary and Wikipedia, there is no such rule. Sometimes insisting on placing the preposition anywhere other than at the end is very awkward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences#Ending_sentence_with_preposition

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/153

Spare Oom
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The reason it is or once was "grammatical taboo" was due to the concept of a prepositional phrase. When one has a prepositional phrase, a preposition is followed by a number of adjectives, and a noun which is the object of the prepositional phrase. If the preposition ends the sentence though, one has a prepositional phrase missing it's object -- which some consider(ed) to be an issue.

However, in modern English, (for the most part) this rule has gone the way of the dodo, just like the rule prohibiting split infinitives. I for one still generally try to avoid ending sentences with prepositions, because such sentences are generally better constructed with the preposition moved somewhere else. However, there are some constructs which can make it difficult to move the preposition elsewhere -- in which case I would simply leave it at the end.

Billy ONeal
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    I think it's worth making clear that "in modern English" = "for at least half a millennium". Or put another way, for as long as people have been commenting seriously on the grammar of English, this has been a natural phenomenon of English syntax. So yes, people invented an artificial definition of "preposition" that ignored the actual data. Why one should care much about such a definition is not entirely clear... – Neil Coffey Apr 02 '11 at 04:43
  • @Neil: That's fair. I don't know much about the historical precedents for these things; only the reasons. – Billy ONeal Apr 02 '11 at 04:44
  • @NeilCoffey I think we can safely say “for at least five millennia”. The inability to separate a preposition from its object is something that arose somewhere in Proto-Romance, and it’s never been relevant to any non-Romance languages. There’s no hint that ending sentences with prepositions has ever violated grammar in any stage of the known and reconstructed stages of language that have led to Modern English. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 23 '16 at 11:01