You’ve all heard the old grammar rule, “Don’t end your sentences with a preposition.” It’s one of those old rules that our high school English teachers like to fall back on. (See, I did it right there. Neener neener neener!)
Actually, this rule, and two others, aren’t really rules at all. One is a faux rule that our English teachers mistakenly clung to, and the other two are slowly dying.
1) Don’t End your Sentences With a Preposition.
2) Don’t Begin Your Sentences With “And,” “But,” or “Or.”
3) Don’t Split Infinitives.
I’m glad to see that some real writers are following language developments, and not just regurgitating centuries-old superstitions.
Don’t End your Sentences With a Preposition.
Martha Barnett and Grant Barrett of the “A Way With Words” public radio show have stated that this is not a real rule at all. In fact, Grant Barriett said it’s an old rule clung to by people who haven’t upgraded their grammar education since the 5th grade.
This rule was created by old school –– I mean really old school –– grammarians like John Dryden (who died in 1700) and Edward Gibbon (who died in 1794) who wanted to standardize language rules. They were so uptight about it, they blindly followed Latin’s grammar rules, which puts the prepositions at the end of a sentence, and stuck us with that one.
A story on DailyWritingTips.com relates that Gibbon was so uptight about this, he even avoided ending words with adverbs that looked like prepositions. For example, in “He ran after the wagon and jumped on,” the word “on” is an adverb, not a preposition.
In other words, the rule is an artificial one. Sure it’s old, but that doesn’t make it right.
Don’t Begin Your Sentences With “And,” “But,” or “Or.”
This one was a real rule, but it’s breaking more and more. It grabs a reader’s attention, it’s becoming more acceptable. And it looks cool.
“But it creates sentence fragments!” wail die-hard grammarians. Then they clap their hands over their mouths, because they just started a sentence with “but.”
Take a look at those last sentences. And it looks cool and But it creates sentence fragments. Are those really sentence fragments? Drop “and” and “but,” and they’re complete sentences. Such as a bottle and a glass. is a fragment.
Okay, I could buy the argument that we should limit this usage, at least in the formal, professional world. But this is the real world. People in my position write like we talk. We use short words and short sentences. We start sentences with “and” and “but.” And we don’t apologize for it.
Don’t Split Infinitives
“To boldly go where no man has gone before” is the example grammarians point to and grit their teeth.
According to TheWritersBag.com, an infinitive consists of the word “to” plus a verb. To go, to be, and to run are all infinitives.
“To go boldly where no man has gone before” is the better option, say the grammarians. “To go boldly where no man before has gone” is the most technically correct option, if you’re still following rule #1 above. (Now do you see why this is just stupid?)
The Oxford English Dictionaries –– the Oxford freakin’ English Dictionary, the mack daddy of all dictionaries –– have said this is just a myth, a superstition. Changing the sentence, they said, to “to go boldly” weakens the sentence, and “boldly to go” is overly-formal and ruins the rhythm of the language.
Henry Fowler’s book, Modern English Usage, even tried to put a rest to this myth, saying it wasn’t necessary:
The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish.
I guess I’m a 4.
There are actually times when not splitting the infinitive will change the entire meaning of the sentence. Grammar Girl said in one of her podcasts:
EXAMPLE: Steve decided to quickly remove Amy’s cats.
In this case, the word quickly splits the infinitive to remove: to quickly remove.
If you try to just unsplit the verb, you actually change the meaning. For example,you might try to say:
EXAMPLE: Steve decided quickly to remove Amy’s cats.
Now, instead of saying that Steve removed Amy’s cats quickly (zip zip) while she stepped out for a minute, you’re saying that he made the decision to remove the cats quickly.
Language is always changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. In this particular case, one rule never should have come into existence. It actually is okay to end our sentences with prepositions. It was in incorrect rule in the first place.
The other two rules –– starting sentences with “and,” “but,” and “or” and splitting infinitives –– are falling by the wayside. While it’s still important to follow the rules in formal writing, like sending letters to the Queen, you can pretty much skip them when following the rules make you just sound like a stuck-up grammar geek or when it changes the meaning of a sentence entirely.
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