John responds to Parasomnium:
quote:
Formal, official, strict English grammar does indeed forbid dangling prepositions. Any grammar teacher in this country would mark a sentence wrong if it ended in 'for.'
Not quite. It is, indeed, true that many people who consider themselves "teachers of English grammar" drill into their pupils' heads that they should never, ever end a sentence with a preposition.
The problem is that nobody follows this rule every single time. More important is non-stilted speech. The statement supposedly by Churchill regarding "up with which I will not put" is exactly right. To avoid dangling the preposition is so obnoxious to the resulting utterance that it is by far better to dangle the preposition (and, on top of that, to use a contraction): "I won't put up with."
By the way...your first link had nothing to say about dangling prepositions. It concerned itself with dangling modifiers. There's a difference. The reason not to use dangling modifiers is that it leads to confusion: "Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while riding to Washington on the back of an envelope." Really? Lincoln was riding on the back of an envelope? And, indeed, dangling prepositions can sometimes lead to confusion, but they very rarely do. Nobody says, "About what are you talking?" They say, "What are you talking about?"
And let's not forget that prepositions can dangle in the middle of a sentence, too: "The number I'm thinking of is between 1 and 100." That "of" is dangling. The supposedly "correct" way of saying it is, "The number of which I'm thinking is between 1 and 100," but very few people will say the latter.
And if that isn't good enough, from
Bartleby.com:
But sentences ending with prepositions can be found in the works of most of the great writers since the Renaissance. In fact, English syntax not only allows but sometimes even requires final placement of the preposition, as in We have much to be thankful for or That depends on what you believe in.
Of course, I could recast those sentences: "We have much for which to be thankful," but that doesn't sound right. Similarly, the "in" in "That depends on what you believe in" is superfluous and you could just as easily say, "That depends on what you believe," but it also sounds wrong, especially when you are making a point about a belief
in something.
That last is why we have the superfluous "at" in the joke: "Where's the library at?" That "at" is superfluous as you could just as easily say, "Where's the library?" By putting in the "at," you are making a point about discerning a location.
Bartleby's comment is quite accurate: So many venerated speakers and writers such as Shakespeare and Churchill have used dangling participles that to decry their usage every single time is to ignore reality: The language works better when they are allowed to dangle. A better rule would be to be careful about how you dangle them.
Similarly, there is no rule that says you can't split infinitives, either. Many grammarians will throw a hissy fit over that, but if you look at the way the language actually gets used, it is clear that native speakers don't have a problem with it.
[edited to correct a statement of fact...the claim about the first link was originally that it didn't say anything about dangling "participles" when I meant to say "prepositions."]
[edited to correct a typo...apparently, my fingers wanted to spell it "Lincon" instead of "Lincoln."]
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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
[This message has been edited by Rrhain, 07-30-2003]
[This message has been edited by Rrhain, 07-30-2003]
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