Prepositions The End Of Sentences At

There is an old, old joke about a chap who asks a librarian what section a particular book is in. 'I'm afraid', says the librarian, 'that I can't answer questions that end with a preposition.' 'All right,' says the chap. 'What section's the book in, you twat.'

This joke is terribly unfair on librarians, because any literate person knows that there is no rule saying that you can't end a sentence with a preposition. It is, as Shakespeare put it, such stuff as dreams are made on. Yet it remains one of those errors that flesh is heir to.

That there is no such rule should be obvious to any English speaker. How would you go about using a phrasal verb in the imperative? 'Out look!' you would scream. 'Down get! On we're being fired!'

Referees would say 'On play.' Off would take planes. And nobody would be allowed to sleep in.

No grammarian supports this wild rule. Fowler calls it a "superstition". Bernstein said that anyone who propounded it didn't have a leg on which to stand. Winston Churchill, who knew his way around a sentence, said it was the kind of nonsense up with which he would not put.

So why, you may ask, is it such a common misconception? Why do so many fools, however inconsistently, assert that there is such a rule? Did they just make up it?

Not exactly.

The rule is utterly unfairly blamed on a chap called Robert Lowth. Lowth was an eighteenth century scholar of ancient languages who believed that it was rather silly that schoolboys learnt their grammar from Latin and that it would be easier for everybody if they learnt English grammar first. So he wrote A Short Introduction to English Grammar. This book is much and misleadingly cited. But for you, dear reader, for you I sat down yesterday and read it cover to cover*.

Here is the actual section on prepositions, and it's well worth reading the whole thing.

PREPOSITIONS have Government of Cases; and in English they always require the Objective Case after them: as, "with him; from her, to me."

The Preposition is often separated from the Relative which it governs and joined to the Verb at the end of the Sentence, or of some member of it: as, "Horace is an author, whom I am much delighted with." "The world is too well bred to shock authors with a truth, which generally their booksellers are the first that inform them of." This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing;

[Any objections so far, dear reader? Notice the "strongly inclined to"?]

but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style.

[That's it. Doesn't sound like a rule to me. It's a little stylistic tip for a particular kind of writing. And just to show that he understood, I shall quote further.]

...But in English the Preposition is more frequently placed after the Verb, and separate from it like an Adverb; in which Situation it is no less apt to affect the Sense of it, and to give it a new Meaning; and may still be considered as belonging to the Verb, and a part of it. As to cast is to throw;  but to cast up, or to compute, an account, is quite a different thing: thus to fall on, to bear out, to give over &c. So that the Meaning of the Verb, and the Propriety of the Phrase, depend upon the Preposition subjoined.

I can't tell whether it is more foolish that that little half-sentence has been taken up by generations of fatuous pedants as an iron law of English, or that for a stylistic suggestion poor Lowth has become the object of so many grammarians' scorn.

Lowth's book has also been blamed for the (utterly fatuous) idea that you can't split an infinitive, which he doesn't mention once. In fact, he toddles along merrily beginning sentences with Ands and Buts and being a good clear writer of English.

So Lowth is less read than condemned. And next time anybody tells you that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, tell them to off piss.

Not Guilty

*The title doesn't lie. It's very, very short.