urban legend: don't end sentence with preposition

Dennis Baron debaron at UIUC.EDU
Thu Jan 4 15:55:12 UTC 2007


There's a new post on the Web of Language, following up on  
yesterday's ban on sex:

"There are plenty of places where we have to use gender-specific  
language.  Unfortunately one of the problems with style guides is  
that they don’t take into account the complexities of actual writing  
situations.... the stripped-down style guides, while popular, are  
better for propping up uneven table legs than for creating balanced  
prose. . . . Only yesterday a perfectly well-meaning reader chided a  
friend of mine for ending a sentence with a preposition."

Read more at the Web of Language

http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

and click on

urban legend: don't end sentence with preposition

Best,

Dennis


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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