“This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”
Winston Churchill
You’ve heard of this rule, right? Don’t end a sentence with a preposition! Well depending on your style, you might want to think of it as only a guideline. Naysayers can quote this book or that, but don’t hold fast to something that might make a particularly fine sentence look confused. Sometimes, for the good of the work, there’s just no way around ending a sentence with a preposition.
There’s a particularly in-depth article by Geoffrey K. Pullum about the quotation above concerning the rule of prepositions paired with an object and those without. Also, there are claims that the “bloody nonsense” comment was misappropriated, but what evidence is there to back that up with?
Prepositions are great. Professors or Grammarphiles might hiss at you, but just smile and say, “What are you lookin’ at?”
Disclaimer: Don’t ever pair “at” with “where,” because it’s redundant. “Where are you?” says it all. “Where are you at?” says more than you would like to think.
