Prepositions at the end of sentences

[Rich7]

A while ago I post a topic for conversation about prepositions used at the end of phrases. I wonder if you could help me locate it because I have not been able to do it.

And to add to this conversation I found the following:

[size=18]Traditional English tells us that there are ways around it and if we look, simply, to the French we can see how things are supposed to be done - the pages on which the book was written, the store at which I bought the hat - do these not sound much more distinguished in written language?

Let us look to the reason why it is acceptable today to end sentences with prespositions - in a word, laziness. People over the ages have left their prepositions to the end of their clauses and now because this is so widespread it has been accepted by grammarians as informally correct.

I do not see many situations in which grammarians would except the "hanging" preposition, but I advise all of you to use it cautiously and, above all, only in spoken or colloquial language. Using it in written language would definitely harm your professionalism.

I above all see no point in debating this though as English has no Academie Francaise to determine what is right or wrong and instead things are correct based on usage - hence, both you and I can be correct at the same time. But I will advise you that if I were ever marking a paper of yours you'd be docked marks for each and every preposition with which you ended a sentence.
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Let me know what you, all, think of it.

[Sunny]

LooooL - Let me guess. That was said by a teacher....

But this corresponds to what I have thought until now. Ending a sentence with a preposition in written language looks unprofessional. If this is regarded so, there is no other way than simply not doing it.
Certain aspects of language can only be used in spoken language and apparently this feature belongs to that, too.

[Alan]

Prepositions at the end of sentences? What's wrong with that? That's not a comment I give any credit to. That's not a theory I believe in. That's not a statement I think much of. Language is a tool that we can use in any way we like. Who are these people who say you can't do this and you can't do that? What are they up to? Where are they at?
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[Sunny]

Well, teachers say that...

But LooooooooooooooooooL - Alan, I definetely like your post. I will learn that by heart - promise

[Torsten]

As Alan has demonstrated there are so many possible sentences that end with a prepositions. Think of such common questions like What are you interested in? What are you good at? What are looking at? What do you want to talk about? What are you getting at? What do you think of? etc.
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[Mister Micawber]

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Only to keep some balance in this thread-- and I know that the dispute rages on (well, 'meanders' is perhaps a better word for it) here and elsewhere-- we must keep in mind that many students are taking language proficiency tests, or writing English essays or business or scientific papers, for which deferred prepositions are not acceptable, at least in the written language.

It is good to let students know that they can freely say 'What are you looking at?' or (less confidently) 'Where are they at?', but the use of more formal language where it is required by circumstance should not be ignored.

Many prepositions do not happily lend themselves to stranding:

'The bad grades that I failed my course through'
'The excursion that I learned all about their culture during'

-- while others demand deferral:

(X) 'My tennis partner is impossible with which to play'.

So to defer or not to defer is not such an easy question. We should try to look at problems which are heavy with opinion, as this one is, without glossing over the details.

Any sign of that previous thread?
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[Alan]

I note the rather schoolmastery rebuke hinted at above following my comments but then the reason I made them was precisely to offer balance. We should perhaps get away from the idea that a preposition has to be attached to a noun (the very word indicating placed before = preposed) and think about the function of the preposition in each sentence and remember that sometimes it is part of a verb - in other words think about what we are looking for. In the 70's and 80's as an examiner for the Cambridge Proficiency examination I certainly wouldn't have been expected to penalise a candidate simply because one of their sentences ended with a preposition and in the 21st century who knows what goes on!

I am very confused about the examples given where the preposition is stranded (at the end) for to me they are not really relevant since they are simply examples of bad grammar.
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[Rich7]

I wonder where it went.......

[Tom]

[Alan]

No Tom, it isn't.

It has a host of meanings depending where and how it is used. In the sense I used it, it means: What are they thinking about? What point of view do they take on this topic?

Hope that elucidates.

Alan
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[Hedonist]

If you are not supposed to have a preposition at the end of the sentence, how would you ask "Where are you from?" .

[Mister Micawber]

Nobody said that you're not 'supposed to have' a deferred or stranded preposition, Hedonist (and say, with a name like that, why are you worried about it?).

In wh-questions, relative clauses and exclamations, the preposition can stand either at the end ('Which car did you come in?' - informal) or at the beginning ('In which car did you come?' - formal). But there are some clauses where there are no alternative positions for the preposition. In nominal wh-clauses, passive clauses, and most infinitive clauses, the preposition must occur at the end ('The old woman was cared for by a nurse'; 'Our new manager is an easy man to work with')

(Courtesy of Leech & Svartvik, A Communicative Grammar of English)
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[Yankee]

Thanks for the comments and information, MM.

I agree that prepositions are often found hung on the ends of sentences -- particularly in informal/spoken English -- and that there is nothing inherently wrong with that. I also agree that formal writing generally has fewer hanging prepositions and that some prepositions work better than others on the end of a sentence. I've always found it a bit difficult to explain why and when (etc) these "hanging prepositions" are OK and when not, so I appreciate the tips and examples.
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[Jesse]

Afternoon all!

Let us not forget that a mere three hundred and forty years ago, punctuation was standardized and consisted of the main tools we still use today. The printing of the Christian Bible was catalytic to that, which is ridiculous, considering that Hebrew and Aramaic contain no punctuation and no vowels. Punctuation, in this case, has given rise to many divisions and sects. Consider this pivotal verse: "Truly, truly, I say unto you, today you will be with me in Paradise." If the comma is placed elsewhere, it completely alters the meaning and intent of the verse and along with it, an entire theological paradigm.

"Truly, Truly, I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise."

In one verse you're going straight to Heaven, while in the other, there's no time specified, so the thief on the cross was only assured that he'd be in Heaven one day, perhaps after the second resurrection, three thousand years from when the promise was made.

We can see the importance of punctuation when the placement of a simple comma can change so much.

That said, how punctuation should be utilized is greatly dependant upon what one is attempting to convey. There is writing and then there's writing. What one would write for the New York Times is not what one would pen in a novel. Most novels consist of between seventy-five and ninety per cent (horrors) dialogue. Prepositions at the end of a sentence in dialogue are as common as fragmented sentences. We simply do not speak in the same way in which we write.

I have a problem with reading too many which's in a document, and that can't be avoided if one wishes to dispose of end of sentence prepositions entirely. Writing is meant to be read and understood, preferably with some level of enjoyment afforded the reader. Most readers don't care (or even know) if you've misplaced a comma (grammatically speaking) or used a preposition at the end of a sentence.

If we were to conduct a study of people who read often, I'm guessing that a good percentage of those readers wouldn't be able to tell us what a preposition is, let alone where it should be placed. I base this on the polls done recently of self-professed daily Bible readers, twelve per cent of whom believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Sixty-eight per cent of the thousands of born-again Christians polled didn't know what John 3:16 says and eighty-six percent of them didn't know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

Let's face it; education ain't what it used to be. Despite the natural evolution of languages, the herd is demonstrably ignorant of the rules of grammar. It isn't surprising. As an experiment, I put the subtitle option on the television while we watched several movies recently. That's where the vast majority of the public is getting its education and it is appalling! Television, which I seldom watch, is even worse.

As a Christian Fiction writer, I pay attention to trends and allow for dialectical changes in root words. At the end of the day, there's no other option left than to admit that the general populace is woefully ignorant of the correct usage of the English language.

Our youngest daughter attends a high-end Christian University where the bar is supposedly set dauntingly high (it's referred to as "the Christian Harvard"), yet third-year students there routinely put a comma in front of the word because and make other similar errors. Go figure! $24,000 a year in tuition and they know almost nothing about grammar, and the sad part is, their teachers either don't notice this, or don't care.

Shalom aleikhem - Jesse.