Ending a Sentence with a Preposition: Your Teacher Probably LIED to You About This Rule

Have you ever been told that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition? Maybe you don’t know what that really means, which makes the rule all the more frightening. Well, breathe a deep sigh of relief because it turns out that rule is complete nonsense. In fact, the notion that an English sentence cannot end in a preposition has been called “cherished superstition” and “arrant pedantry.”

Let’s get into it, starting with what the heck that rule is even trying to say.

What Is a Preposition?

Prepositions are one of the eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and interjection.

Merriam Webster gives a pretty good definition: “A preposition is a word—and almost always a very small, very common word—that shows direction, location, or time, or that introduces an object. Prepositions are typically followed by an object, which can be a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun.”

So in the sentence “I went to the store,” “to” is the preposition. It’s indicating the direction I’m going. “The store” is the object of the preposition “to.”

Another way to describe prepositions is to say that they signal relationships between elements or nouns in a sentence. That relationship might have to do with space, position, time, cause, possession, or any other way that the different elements might be connected.

You might have heard that a preposition is anything that a frog can do to a log (or what a cat can do to a chair, or something else like that):

• The frog can hop outside the log.
• The frog can hop to the log.
• The frog can hop over the log.
• The frog can hide under the log.
• The frog can hide within the log.

However, this doesn’t cover all prepositions. For example, “after” is a preposition, and that’s harder to fit into as sentence about a frog and a log.

Here’s a chart with the most common uses for prepositions and some examples:

With an idea about what a preposition is, it’s time to look at where a preposition can be located within a sentence!

Where Does It Go?

A preposition usually comes before an object. In fact, in Latin, the word “preposition” means “to put before.” A preposition indicates a relationship, so you’ll often find it somewhere between the two elements in the sentence whose relationship it’s describing.

The cat darted under the chair and into the bedroom. (Prepositions: “under” and “into”)

However, some prepositions come after their objects. The Chicago Manual of Style points out that “that” usually comes after its object:

This is the moment that I’ve been waiting for.

“That” is referring to “the moment,” but it’s located after that noun.

Many grammarians will tell you that a preposition can go just about anywhere in a sentence EXCEPT at the end. Prepositions at the end of sentences can be called terminal prepositions, and lots of people hate them.

He’s the only person I just can’t put up with.

I asked them, “What are you talking about?”

I highlighted those in orange because sentences like that will probably earn you a red mark from your English teacher, but they’re not actually technically wrong. It’s just that this guy named John Dryden decided in 1672 that he hated terminal prepositions, and people have been avoiding them ever since.

John Dryden’s Beef with Terminal Prepositions

Possibly because of the Latin translation of the word, some grammarians insist that a preposition cannot end a sentence. After all, if the word means “to put before,” how can you possibly have it at the end, with no words for it to go before? John Dryden was reportedly the first person to condemn terminal prepositions, and he did so all the way back in 1672.

Dryden was a poet, playwright, and essayist, and he wrote this essay called “Defence of the Epilogue” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage). In this piece of criticism, he says that writers of his time were much better than the previous generation of writers. He specifically calls out Ben Jonson, saying, “The Preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observ’d in my own writings.” Dryden specifically calls out the end of one sentence in Jonson’s 1611 play Catiline, which reads, “The bodies that those souls were frightened from.” Dryden was also bold enough to criticize Shakespeare for using terminal prepositions in some of his works.

Many grammarians grabbed onto this new rule, including Hugh Blair, who wrote a book about rhetoric in 1783 and said that terminal prepositions should be avoided. Lindley Murray agreed in his 1795 book about grammar, and so did Noah Webster in 1784. Those three books were widely used to teach grammar at that time, so nearly everyone was learning that they should avoid ending a sentence in a preposition.

It All Comes Back to Latin (Because Of Course It Does)

We can see Dryden’s logic that a word meaning “to put before” should be before something. But that’s probably not the only reason why he believed that prepositions should not end sentences.

This was around the time when people in Britain were trying to “perfect” the English language, and they would often reference Latin because of Rome’s success as an empire. They wanted Britain to be like Rome, so they thought English should be like Latin. In Latin, it’s impossible to end a sentence with a preposition—that construction simply does not exist. So Dryden likely noticed that difference between English and Latin and decided that things needed to change.

The Chicago Manual of Style states that “the ‘rule’ prohibiting terminal prepositions was an ill-founded superstition based on a false analogy to Latin grammar.”

Latin doesn’t have any terminal prepositions, but that restriction doesn’t exist in the English language. In English, it is possible to end a sentence with a preposition (and people have been doing it since way back in the days of Old English). And sometimes it’s incredibly awkward NOT to end with a preposition. That’s what Winston Churchill was arguing when he (allegedly) called this made-up rule “arrant pedantry.”

Winston Churchill’s Beef with Dryden

Winston Churchill was a masterful writer and speaker, and he is credited with calling out the ridiculousness of avoiding terminal prepositions. Apparently, an editor changed a sentence in one of Churchill’s speeches, re-working it so that it didn’t end in a preposition. About the change, Churchill is reported to have said, “That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.“

Of course, the natural way to say that is “That is the type of arrant pedantry that I won’t put up with,” but that ends with a preposition (“with”). If you re-work the sentence to avoid a terminal preposition, you end up with Churchill’s pointedly odd-sounding statement.

(There’s some debate as to whether Churchill ever actually said that, but it’s funny and English nerds like me love a good grammar joke.)

The REAL Rule

So what’s the REAL rule? Most grammarians agree that you are totally fine to end a sentence in a preposition. The Chicago Manual of Style—which is a pretty conservative grammar rule book—states, “The traditional caveat of yesteryear against ending sentences or clauses with prepositions is an unnecessary and pedantic restriction. And it is wrong.” It continues, “A sentence that ends in a preposition may sound more natural than a sentence carefully constructed to avoid a final preposition.”

Check out this example of a sentence that SHOULD end in a preposition:

My friend Lucy introduced John: “This is the man about which I told you!”

No one talks to their friends like that in real life. It sounds much more natural to end the sentence with the preposition “about”:

My friend Lucy introduced John: “This is the man I told you about!”

There are some constructions that require a terminal preposition, such as “log in” or “sign out.”

You must use your new password in order to log in.

Just about everyone has agreed that we’re not going to enforce the rule against terminal prepositions anymore, so feel free to go wild and use them whenever you’d like!

Some Famous Authors Who Used Terminal Prepositions

Shakespeare: “Thou hast no speculation in those eyes / Which thou dost glare with” —Macbeth, 1606

Robert Frost (in a letter): “The University is one most people have heard of.” 1936

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park: “Fanny could with difficulty give the smile that was here asked for.”

Sources:

• “America’s Most Trusted Dictionary.” Merriam-Webster. Accessed September 10th, 2024. https://www.merriam-webster.com/.
• The Chicago Manual of Style. 17th ed. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Einsohn, Amy. The Copyeditor’s Handbook. 3rd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: Univ of California Pr, 2011.
• Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: How To Craft Wicked Good Prose. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2013.
• Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. 14th ed. Taunton, MA: QuadGraphics, 2016.