On Ending a Sentence With a Preposition...AND...What Did Winston Churchill REALLY say?
Attacking the hoary old rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition is rather like shooting fish in a barrel. Nobody defends the rule. Apparently, not even the guy who invented it insisted on it:
According to Bill Bryson [The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way [c.US$10]], "The source of this stricture... was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad." And further, that "...even he was not didactic about it. He recognized that ending a sentence with a preposition was idiomatic and common in both speech and informal writing. He suggested only that he thought it generally better and more graceful, not crucial, to place the preposition before its relative "in solemn and elevated" writing."
ojohaven.com
I should say that even today there are some grammarians who advise recasting a sentence to avoid ending it with a preposition -- that is, to avoid ending it with a whimper rather than a bang. For example:
Problem ? << Ending>> a << sentence>> with a << preposition>> is a waste of one of the most emphatic positions in the sentence. [Rewrite example]
Politicians talk a lot these days about "traditional American virtues," though "compassion" is one traditional American virtue that modern politicians seems to know very little about.
Revision? Politicians talk a lot these days about "traditional American virtues," though one traditional American virtue that modern politicians seems to know very little about is compassion.
However, nobody argues that ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically "incorrect". Here is the alt.english.usage FAQ on the subject:
Preposition at end. Yes, yes, we've all heard the following anecdotes:
1.Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill's sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition. Churchill scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant nonsense" substituted for "English", or with other variations. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites Sir Ernest Gowers' Plain Words (1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that Churchill . . ."; so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote.)
2.The Guinness Book of (World) Records used to have a category for "most prepositions at end". The incumbentrecord was a sentence put into the mouth of a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from a book about Australia as a bedtime story: "What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under' up for?" Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) -- all this is to the best of his recollection; he didn't save the letter, and doesn't have access to the British editions -- wrote to Guinness, asking: "What did you say that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about "Down Under" up for?' for? The preceding sentence has one more." Norris McWhirter replied, promising to include this improvement in the next British edition; but actually it seems that Guinness, no doubt eventually realising that this could be done recursively, dropped the category.
3.At a certain U.S. university:
"Excuse me, where is the library at?"
"Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
"O.K. Excuse me, where is the library at, asshole?"
Fowler and nearly every other respected prescriptivist see nothing wrong with ending a clause with a preposition; Fowler calls it a "superstition". ("Never end a sentence with a preposition" is how the superstition is usually stated, although it would "naturally" extend to any placement of a preposition later than the noun or pronoun it governs.) Indeed, Fowler considers "a good land to live in" grammatically superior to "a good land in which to live", since one cannot say "a good land which to inhabit".
scripps.edu
Perhaps even more interesting to pursue is the vexed question of -- what did Winston Churchill really say?
Jack, your version goes as follows:
That is a situation up with which I will not put!
Another variation:
This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put.
ling.upenn.edu
A windier version, found on two different sites:
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
wsu.edu
Then, of course, the alt.english.usage version, quoted above:
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
And finally, my favorite retelling of the tale, original spellings and all:
Improper Grammer Error 58C
Mr. Winston Churchill was once publically reprimanded for ending a sentence with a preposition.
"Mr. Churchill," he was told, "one should never end one's sentence with a preposition!"
"Madamme," he replied, "that is a rule up with which, I shall not put."
Dare we admit the possibility that the tale is -- oh, horrors! -- apocryphal?
Another interesting tale about Churchill -- one he tells himself -- concerns his absolute inability to learn Latin, when he first entered public school (Eton?). For one thing, as he relates, he could not understand the vocative case. Why, he asked, should I say <O, mensa!> for <Oh, table!>? Why on earth would I ever speak to a table?
In fact, young Winston was so deliberately dense about Latin (or so he says), that his exasperated schoolmasters took him out of Latin class altogether and put him with the "dunces" in the English class. And that is what he attributed his excellent command of the English language to. (Please note that I ended that sentence with a preposition.)
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