Prepositions: things not to end a sentence with?

You may already be aware of an age-old rule of grammar that says that we should NEVER end a sentence with a preposition.

I, and much of the English speaking world, respectfully disagree.

Prepositions are words that describe the relation of a noun to other parts of a sentence, to wit:

• The pencil was on the desk.

• I went to the movies with my friends.

• We walked through the park.

In these examples, the prepositions appear in positions elsewhere than the end of each sentence - so far so good. But how about these examples?

• Who did you go with?

• What time are you open until?

• There were more people there than you could shake a stick at.

According to the traditional (by that I mean arcane) rules of grammar, even though these sentences sound okay, they are technically incorrect. They should be re-written as:

• With whom did you go?

• Until what time are you open?

and my personal favorite:

• There were more people there than at which you could shake a stick.

Seriously, especially that last one...who talks like this?

Winston Churchill summed it up when he sardonically declared:

It begs the question...who made up this rule in the first place? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's actually one with a real answer:

We can blame John Dryden, a 17th century poet who personally disliked the sound of a sentence with a preposition on the end. He tried to justify his point by alluding to the fact that Latin sentences never ended with a preposition, ignoring that pesky detail that English is a Germanic language with no grammatical ties to Latin. He did his utmost to influence his contemporaries to follow suit, and did so to great success (if you can call it that).

That fact is: this has never been a "rule" of English grammar, just John throwing his weight around.

Today, common sense is finally taking over. The Merriam-Webster dictionary and even the Oxford English Dictionary have officially declared that it is perfectly okay to end a sentence with a preposition. It's largely a question of context and flow, and can make sentences sound more natural and less pretentious.

So go back to your old high school, find your English teacher, show her this article, and demand she give back those five marks she took off your essay where you "violated" the preposition rule. Tell her that comes straight from the Grammar Boss.

You're welcome.