All about Prepositions

[Today’s guest writer is my friend Kelly Pomeroy. I enjoyed a recent exchange of ideas with Kelly so much that I asked her to do a guest post.]

 We’ve often heard that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. This arbitrary rule may have originated with 17th Century British author John Dryden, who greatly admired Latin – a language which did not provide for prepositions at the ends of clauses – and tried to apply its rules to English.

This thinking was picked up by Robert Lowth, an 18th Century British Anglican clergyman and biblical scholar who undertook to write a comprehensive grammar of English. He acknowledged that ending a sentence or clause with a preposition was in fact what people were doing, and that it served quite well. But perhaps he was deferring to Dryden when he added that “the placing of the Preposition before the Relative [its object] is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style.”

But is it really more graceful to say “that’s the answer for which I’m looking” than “that’s the answer I’m looking for”?  No, it’s clumsy and odd-sounding.

Substitute the sentence “that’s not what I’m looking for” and there’s no way you can even rearrange it and still have passable English. “That’s not that for which I’m looking”? Try that one out if you want to receive some really odd looks.

Good English sounds natural, not contorted or “hypercorrect.” Competent writers know that and do not try to adhere to phony rules that serve only to interrupt the flow of their words.

P.S. Here are some specific examples of poor English written by people who should know better:

NASA 8/9/17:  “The best Perseid performance of which we are aware occurred back in 1993, when the peak Perseid rate topped 300 meteors per hour.”

Vice News 11/19/16:  It’s one of many economic challenges with which the government has been unable to deal….

MidSouth Week in Review 5/16/2017 “There is an app called ‘Moodies’, which can already tell in which mood you are.”

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