There’s a video put out by the folks of Miriam-Webster that has been floating around. It’s worth a little thinking about. It suggests that, despite what your third grade teacher taught you, a preposition might not be the most terrible thing to end a sentence with.
In fact, these language experts who, mind you, have now decided to include the nonsensical “irregardless” in their dictionary, point to the history of English to rest their case upon. They suspect it began with a little known 17th century grammarian named Joshua Poole whose work, The English Accidence, does mention that one should use prepositions following only the natural order they should appear in.
England’s first Poet Laureate John Dryden apparently agreed with him, and once took critical aim at poet Ben Johnson’s use of the line: “The bodies that those souls were frighted from.” Because Dryden used to translate his own work into Latin as a way to revise for concise and elegant language, the assumption is that he preferred the grammatical rules of Latin to force English into.
Whether this was the real reason for his preference, however, doesn’t totally shine through. Dryden did also once take himself to task for occasionally spotting a line or two in his own work where a sentence-ending preposition had slipped out.
All writers have preferences they rarely go against. It’s certainly not a habit that I can claim to be above. Still, it’s unclear why this particular preference of this particular poet became a hard and fast rule no student could live without. What is certain is that in the wake of Miriam-Webster’s claim that the rule never was a rule, the debate has been a furious one that it may take some time to get over. This is a topic that sure gets people worked up.
I do appreciate that language evolves and I try not to be too pretentious about it, but based on this brief experiment with lackluster, and maybe even just plain strange sentence structures, I don’t think I’m ready yet to throw the rule out. All I can say is that I will certainly think it through.
Author Sarah Angleton 
Lovely piece.
Any sentence needs to carry its own meaning and make sense to a reader. If a particular order of words helps that reader find the stress of a sentence (possibly carried by the voice in the reader’s head) then that furthers the tale/meaning and the flow of the matter being read.
Go with the flow!
My particular bugbear is the use of adjectives in weird places eg: “the purple child’s coat”. What’s with that?
That is particularly egregious. Not that I have anything against purple children. I’ve just never met one.
Yes indeed 😉
Clever, Sarah!
Thank you!
As the great Winston Churchill once (Supposedly. No verifiable source actually proves he said it.) said, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
“Irregardless” of who did or did not say it, it’s a great quote.
Nope. I thought I could do it, but it kind of hurts my soul a little. An occasional preposition at the end of a sentence, however, I can live with.
😁
I’ve heard the adhering to Latin grammar rules explanation before. I tend to go by ear. Or, if rewriting makes something crisper or clearer, then I’ll make the change. I’m more concerned about people using the wrong word that sounds sort of like the one they mean…
I agree. I’m not really all that good at intentionally following the rules, even though I mostly naturally do.
Hi. I try to write in a conversational manner. So, some of my sentences end in a preposition. Take care. Neil S.
Mine, too. 😀
I don’t mind ending a sentence with a preposition if I am unable to make the sentence sound better by relocating the preposition.
Same. And now I no longer have to feel like a failure when I do it.