In the biggest grammar news since the advent of the Oxford comma, the dictionary dignitaries at Merriam-Webster have declared it acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. This, of course, has sparked great debate on the internet, which should not be surprising, as the internet is the primary place people go to argue with each other.
According to the wise counsel of Merriam-Webster, “If you don’t like to end your sentences with prepositions, you don’t have to — just don’t say that it is a rule. And if you like to end your sentences with a succinct with, go right ahead and keep doing so [...]”
This is a big deal, as terminating sentences with prepositions has been considered the letter of the law for longer than I can remember.
Before I give you my take on the subject, let’s revisit what prepositions are in the first place. A preposition is a word that connects a noun to another nearby word or phrase in a sentence. I know — that’s confusing. But remember what most of us learned in school: a preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree (up, over, around, through, with, etc.) Let me give you some examples:
Mari tripped (over) the sleeping platypus.
Joe his daughters by showing off his dance skills (during) the Taylor Swift concert.
I locked my keys (inside) my car again.
Here’s where the old-school grammarians will wag their fingers at the Merriam-Webster wonks as well as yours truly: when you have to drastically and unnaturally alter your sentence structure to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, don’t worry about it. By doing so, you either sound way too formal or like you’re doing a Yoda impression. Instead of saying, “The underwater basket weaving match was rained out,” people will contort their sentence into, “Rained out the underwater basket weaving match was.” When I read that, my inner narrator sounds precisely like Luke Skywalker’s tiny green guru.
Sure, it’s important to maintain formal sentence structure when the occasion calls for it: in a job cover letter, in academic papers and when ordering at multi-Michelin star restaurants. But, in everyday usage, ending the occasional sentence in a preposition isn’t a big deal. If dramatically altering your sentences to avoid ending them in prepositions makes them sound super awkward and overly formal, you may just need to lighten the heck up.
Curtis Honeycutt is a syndicated humor columnist. He is the author of Good Grammar is the Life of the Party: Tips for a Wildly Successful Life. Find more at curtishoneycutt.com.
