Thursday 29 June 2006

Style and Grammar

In a bid to raise the standard of the blogosphere, I wish to point out that too many bloggers are ending their sentences with prepositions. This is the sort of thing I mean: "Just had an amusing case of passing a message along electronically at the Telco conference I am at."

Awful. As Winston Churchill said about such things, "This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put."

LINK: 'Preposititions at the End,' part of Guide to Grammar & Style - 'P'

TAGS: Blog

5 comments:

Josh said...

Nothing wrong with terminating prepositions if they make the sentence flow better (in your example, it clearly doesn't). My favourite story:

Woman on a bus says to a fellow passenger "So where are you going to?"

Other passenger replies "You know, you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition."

Woman says "OK: So where are you going to, bitch?"

Anonymous said...

:D

Although, how many bloggers gave a damn about sentence flow?

sagenz said...

and in your very next post you write "They's not"

gave me a laugh anyway. because you meant to? :)

Peter Cresswell said...

Thanks Phil. I did intend to put a preposition at the end of a sentence in that post (just for a laugh, and to make Josh's point), but I didn't intend that one. Fixed now. :-)

Good point, Josh. That was Churchill's point. Know the rule, but know when it needs to broken. Nice joke too. I was going to post a similar one about an ebonics student at university:

Black Student: Yo! Where's the library at?
Grammar Student: One shouldn't end one's sentences on a preposition.
Black Student (thinks): Okay. Where's the library at, motherfucker!?

Oh, these grammar jokes. They kill me. :-)

Berend de Boer said...

DPF isn't conservative, but liberal...