The ‘Rule’ Against Ending Sentences With Prepositions Has Always Been Silly by John McWhorter in the NYT
Late last month, Merriam-Webster shared the news on Instagram that it’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition. Hats off to them, sincerely. But it is hard to convey how bizarre, to an almost comical degree, such a decree seems in terms of how language actually works. It is rather like announcing that it is now permissible for cats to meow.
There has long been a tacit idea that the pox on ending sentences with a preposition is based on some kind of principle — maybe linguistic or maybe aesthetic. Actually, it is based on essentially nothing. Like phlogiston, spontaneous generation and gnomes, the preposition rule started with an idea that felt right in another time but has no logical standing today.
The first person on record to declare opposition to ending sentences with a preposition was the poet John Dryden in the 17th century. But what really set the idea in stone was Bishop Robert Lowth’s highly influential “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” in 1762 and its direct descendant, Lindley Murray’s “English Grammar” in 1795. The two manuscripts had the same sort of influence in the 18th and 19th centuries as Strunk & White would have later. (continued)