What’s everyone in the media debating these days? Whether Obama will select Clinton as his running mate? The Pitt-Jolie family’s new thirty-five bedroom house? Who would win in a battle between cavemen and astronauts? No. None of these.
Today’s hot topic is the preposition. Yes, I know it’s shocking. I know it’s not quite PC to be discussing it, but the fact remains that there is the question of the preposition and its role in society, and I have the answer.
I said before that although the rule states otherwise, it is generally OK to start a sentence with a conjunction (with the exception of formal writing). Today we’re looking at the end of the sentence. The rule is this: one should never ever end a sentence with a preposition.
What do I think of this rule? It should be law. In writing, one should never ever under any circumstances end a sentence with a preposition. An example of this transgression is as follows:
“Where is the dog at?”
“I need a box to put this in.”
Writing is one thing, and speaking, I know, is a horse of a different color. We all have our own dialects, and dialects, like taxes, are unavoidable. In my dialect area, it is common for a person to end his or her sentences with prepositions, and I have been known to do so when speaking informally. I do try to catch myself whenever possible, but it’s hard to unlearn a behavior. However, I feel that there is at least one preposition that should never end a sentence, no matter who you are. That preposition is “at”.
In my opinion, one can slide by with “I need a box to put this in,” but “Where’s the dog at?” is the proverbial sore thumb. Ending a sentence with “at” screams hillbilly, and believe me when I say I know hillbilly.
I know what the naysayers’ argument is. That the preposition rule was arbitrarily made up by some guy who decided one day that it should be so. That just because he said so doesn’t make the rule valid. Well that guy was a grammarian, and he knew what he was talking about. Besides, he’s not the only one to have said so, because most grammarians since then have agreed with him, and that makes it valid. So follow the rules, and no one gets hurt.
How does one avoid ending his sentence with one of those pesky little words? In the case of “at,” one can generally simply leave it off, because another word has probably covered it. For example, in “Where’s the dog at?” the word “where” is already performing the same function as “at,” so the sentence should read, “where’s the dog?” There’s no need to make complexities of things. In our other example, we simply must switch the word order. “I need a box to put this in,” becomes “I need a box in which to put this.” Ta da! A grammatically correct sentence in one easy step.
Take a look at the following chart from this site to get an idea of some other prepositions.
| about | behind | from | on | toward |
| above | below | in | on top of | under |
| across | beneath | in front of | onto | underneath |
| after | beside | inside | out of | until |
| against | between | instead of | outside | up |
| along | by | into | over | upon |
| among | down | like | past | with |
| around | during | near | since | within |
| at | except | of | through | without |
| before | for | off | to |
