Ending a Sentence with a Preposition - Merriam-Webster Ask the Editor

[Aeschylus]

In our sister-language German you can only say "that's the house in which I live" ("das ist das Haus, in dem ich wohne"), but in our other sister-language Icelandic (Old Norse), you can only say "that's the house that I live in" ("það er húsið sem ég búa í").

In English we can have either, but I've seen (heard) how unnatural it can be not to end with a preposition when asked by telemarketers "with whom am I speaking with?"

[intermaniax1]

My prof:"David, never end your sentence with a preposition

Me

watch?v=toxIiMWQgKA

[fernank017]

So, this is where the grammar nazis meet...

[dbuschhorn]

Turn switch up to on, down to off. Can you feel that, Grammar? Does it sting? Ended that sentence in SIX PREPOSITIONS! Catch phrase!

[NumbFlynn]

@dbuschhorn On and off hardly count as prepositions when used this way :P

[99davidpaul]

"Give them what they requested." That doesn't sound weird and avoids the terminal preposition. Come on Merriam-Webster, shouldn't you be promoting the use of your famous dictionaries and thesaruses to improve the quality of our writing?

[Ashtar94]

@99davidpaul They *are* helping us improve the quality of our writing -- by distinguishing real rules of English from superstitions. We do not improve the quality of our writing by avoiding the terminal preposition, because there's nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition (especially when there's an object to the preposition right in the sentence). That's the point.

[ChazMyTube]

My favorite is when people go the effort of "Whom did you go to school with?" getting the pronoun correct and leaving the preposition dangling off the end, to fend for itself?

Makes Van Gogh want to bite his other ear off?

Perhaps, giving it a little thought, it could be recast as, "Who attended school with you?" ~sCz

[curtismason111]

Apparently, sentence fragments are also okay, judging from the description.

[TheTrieutran]

I enjoy the last sentence, they way she said it is so funny LOL

[Jonassoe]

I only end sentences with prepositions whenever the alternative sounds silly =D

[silversmith8]

Emily's videos are my favourites too :D.

[robby2hollywood]

Emily Brewster's discussions are my favorite. They answer our common grammatical confusions.

[Ylirymiry]

I was taught in school to rephrase the sentence if it doesn't seem practical when made proper. Instead, Merriam Webster is telling us, "To hell with it!" This is ridiculous!!!

[ArcticFahx]

@Ylirymiry Sorry, but English is primarily a Germanic language, not Romance. It came to England from the Saxon invaders from what is now Germany. So the obsession with turning English into a Latin-based grammar that occurred in the 1700s was the REAL abomination to English.

[shammadamma]

@Ylirymiry

Webster is doing no such thing. They're merely separating actual grammar rules from silly grammar myths -- and this is an example of the latter. The entire notion of the rule is predicated on the fact that you can't end a sentence with a preposition *in Latin.* English is not Latin.

[Ylirymiry]

This is absolutely appalling... Do what feels right? Let's all start speaking ebonics!

[sunkenOcean01]

@Ylirymiry Is that what really feels right to you? I'm so sorry.

[Ashtar94]

I agree, but I get thrown for a loop when there's the preposition appears in an infinitive phrase instead of a relative clause. For example: "A preposition is a perfectly appropriate kind of word to end a sentence with." Where is the object of the preposition "with"? (Certainly not the word "preposition"; that's the subject of the sentence. Nor "kind of word," which is the predicate nominative.) I don't see an easy way around this without rephrasing the sentence to get rid of the infinitive.

[JoaeP2]

@Ashtar94 "To end a sentence with a preposition is a perfectly appropriate." You don't need to get rid of the infinitive; only move things around a bit.

[Ashtar94]

@JoaeP2 I agree that it's perfectly appropriate to end a sentence with a preposition. It's just that in most cases, the preposition has an object *somewhere* in the sentence. That's not always the case with infinitives -- e.g., "A preposition is a perfectly appropriate word to end a sentence with." It seems strange to me to have a preposition without an object -- which is often the case when the sentence has an infinitive.

[RTube7]

Nice post ! Thanks for straightening that one out.

[BillionSix]

I wonder if Emily knows she seems to be developing a fan club.

[trexaur123]

I'm Arab. And the transition from writing in Arabic to writing in English was accompanied by many irregularities, one of which was ending with preposition.

It's good to know that it is ok.

[DataRelater]

Next, I hope you take on starting sentences with conjunctions.

What's wrong with starting a sentence...but-first?

[digitaldown]

Never end a sentence with a preposition? I always thought that was a silly rule.

Where are you from?

I am next.

When you reconstruct a sentence to get the preposition off the end, you often wind up sounding like Yoda.

[TheUniversalWoman]

I really enjoyed this. I've gone full nerd and I'm really ok with it. :-)

[semasiologistics]

Except Churchill's example doesn't work as well as we would have it since the preposition is actually a particle in the phrasal verb to put up with, verses a preposition like "to" in to speak to, which is not a phrasal verb. Of course, no one will usually be able to respond to Churchill's repartee in such a way, however, if they did! IF THEY DID! :)

Infomative video, thank you. :) Go Merriam (and descriptivists everywhere :)

[driddy1]

Lovely!!!

[tommylehman]

Very interesting. I hope to see more of these.

[bangyourhead55]

Even though English is not my native first tongue, I use and end sentences with prepositions all the time, it just seems, feels, and sounds so natural.. By the way, "this is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put" has become one of my fav lines. Did I mention that you Emily Brewster are beautiful, simply the most gorgeous grammarian I've ever seen.

[soraluna606]

@GirlCraft This is so very true! It's only after finding a gem like this channel that I realize how much I have missed out not knowing about it before. ^_^

[soraluna606]

This was both entertaining and educational, thank you! I'm very glad that I found your videos and cannot wait to watch the rest of them.

[oisiaa]

I see this one going viral like the octopus one.

[Plutor]

The problem with the (supposed) Churchill quote is that "with" is not a preposition in the sentence you're trying to avoid. Rather, it's a part of the phrasal verb "put up with". So breaking it apart to mis-correct it doesn't just sound wrong, it IS wrong.

[clavidor12121]

These vids are crack-cocaine equivalents to logophiles -- pithy, fun times which end in acute withdrawal.

[josephodonoghue]

As always, highly interesting nuggets of information. Thanks.

[Chilly296]

Thumbs way up!