Essay
Terminal Prepositions
Joke: A good ole’ boy from Tennessee got accepted to Harvard. On his first day, he got lost among the grandeur while looking for the library. He stopped an elderly, professorial man and asked, “Could you please tell me where the library is at?” The professor looked down his nose at the bumpkin and said, “Sir, here at Harvard we do not end our sentences with prepositions.” The bumpkin rubbed his whiskers and said, “Okay. Where’s the library at, ***hole.”
While editing the proof of one of his books, Winston Churchill spotted a sentence that had been clumsily rewritten by the editor to eliminate a preposition at the end. The elder statesman mocked the intention with a comment in the margin: “This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.” This anecdote reflects an intolerance that thrives on both sides of the Atlantic for the rule prohibiting sentence-final prepositions. So where did the rule come from, anyway? The friggin’ Romans, that’s where.
Never Sever
Latin-indoctrinated schoolmasters argued that because sentences commonly contain several prepositional phrases, it is important to keep up with which noun goes with which preposition. The easiest way to do that is by rule: Never sever a preposition from its object noun (or noun phrase). For example, in Latin, “vino” means “in wine,” as in “in vino veritas” (in wine there is truth). However, you don’t need “in” because it is inherent in the word “vino.” The preposition “in” and the noun “wine” are bound up and unified in one word, so they cannot be severed, even with the keenest sword. Moreover, the “pre” in “preposition” means “before,” so how can converting it to a postposition be correct? Believing that Latin grammar represents grammatical perfection, grammarians proscribed the use of prepositions anywhere other than immediately before their object nouns.
Let’s look at a few examples.
The teacher erased the provocative words that John laughed at.
This is a classic case of a terminal preposition. This won’t fly according to grammar mavens. To repair this atrocity, let’s rearrange these words a bit:
The teacher erased the provocative words at which John laughed.
Pretentious? Yes. Correct? Let’s not pass judgment just yet. Here’s another example.
Which sector does he work in?
Here’s the so-called fix:
In which sector does he work?
Not bad—for a formal communication like a final report (you wouldn’t want to say this in a vulgar conversation with your friends, though). But ask yourself: Is that you? It isn’t me; nor was it Winston Churchill. So, why are we making these mistakes? Why do we dot the ends of our sentences with prepositions? Because it’s natural. The grammar that they teach you in, you know, grammar school may advance rules that we chafe against (is “chafe against” a violation?). What they teach you is called “prescriptive” or “ normative” grammar, what I sometimes call “synthetic” grammar. What you internalize in your formative years from the speakers around you is called “notional” or “organic” grammar. The two grammars I label above are not the same and often result in tension.
Your Terminal Preposition May Be Something Else
Some rules of prescriptive grammar are based on misconceptions about language and causes far more mischief than good. Consider the joke at the beginning of this essay. The final word of the bumpkin’s innocent question—that seemingly obvious preposition “at”—is not really a preposition at all. (Clue: There’s no object to go with it.) The “at” is idiom—it’s an extra word that emerged in a nonsensical way from centuries of talking.
That takes care of one bugaboo, but what about the gazillions of examples you encounter in everyday speech, as well as formal documents? In many cases, the terminal prepositions are not prepositions—they are particles of “phrasal verbs.” Sorry. I didn’t make up these terms. Anyway, let’s define “phrasal verb”:
A combination of verb and one or more adverbial or prepositional particles (http://dictionary.reference.com)
Wikipedia has a list of example phrasal verbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb). In essence, when you end a sentence with what looks like a preposition, you can justify it as a verb particle. Moreover, some phrasal verbs have two prepositional particles, like the “put up with” implied in Churchill’s famous anecdote.
Now, let’s consider one of these things:
A lightning arrester protects only the pole that it is installed on.
“Installed on” is the phrasal verb, and both parts belong together. The particle “on” does not take an object. Rather, the verb “installed on” takes an object. And so we are free to observe the common rules of severability. That is:
- The object may be severed from the phrasal verb when it simplifies the sentence structure or achieves the desirable level of formality (“the pole that it is installed on” rather than “the pole on which it is installed”).
- The adverbial/prepositional particle may be severed from the verb, as in “Turn the television off” rather than “Turn off the television.”
The bottom line is that the object of a phrasal verb is mobile and not subject to anchor rules that produce pretentious sentences. The particle of a phrasal verb may end up at the end of a sentence as the result of natural linguistic drive.
Bottom Lines Wiggle Like Salted Worms
If I say, “End your sentences as you see fit,” then a lettered individual might say, “This author doesn’t know the rule,” thus diminishing you, if only a bit. Remember the tension I talked about? The tension between organic grammar and prescriptive grammar? Here it is. Your good sense against your reader’s devotion to the rule hoard. So, the rule that I’m now advancing is rather squishy, but it’s the best I can do:
Know your audience, and know the level of formality expected, and when a “terminal preposition” occurs during the composition of a document, leave it or repair it accordingly.