From the Up With Which I Shall Not Put department: When it comes to not ending sentences with prepositions, everybody ought to get aboard. After all, proper grammar is what the web should be about! Maybe sloppy sentences are acceptable in some venues, but we should try to stay a cut above. Clear communication helps to get our message across. Of course, careful sentence structure is something you have to keep after. But for every excuse for sloppiness, there is at least one reason against. We should all just get along. Proper grammar is where it is at.
You’ve probably heard arguments against ending sentences with prepositions before. You definitely don’t want to get left behind. These kinds of things can really sneak up on you from below. Sentences ending with prepositions can get really messy besides! I think that they ought to be banned from the prologue to the epilogue and everywhere in between. In fact, I would even go one step beyond. That’s just because good grammar is increasingly hard to come by.
Some of you undoubtedly wonder what I’m going on for. Maybe it is hard to tell where I’m coming from.
You just don’t know what a mess poorly-constructed sentences can turn into. You have no idea what it can be like. I sometimes talk to myself in poorly-constructed setences when nobody is near. It’s not unheard of. But it really puts me off. And I can just go on and on. I keep thinking I’ll eventually exhaust the list of prepositions, but I never seem to run out. I googled for an exhaustive list of prepositions once, and I’ve never run out since. Just reciting the list without context is excruciating to sit through. It’s awful to listen to.
I’ll probably never stop hearing sentences ending with prepositions until I’m six feet under. Every now and then I think things are looking up. Bad grammar just isn’t something I should have to put up with. Put another way, proper sentence structure is something nobody should have to do without.
Yes, I’m aware that I mis-used some of these words to fit sentence structure, and therefore they aren’t really prepositions in the form I’m using them. Sue me.
© 2003 Phillip Winn, CC Licensed.