Prepositions Are Now Okay to End Sentences With

But a major occurrence has taken place a couple of years ago, and it involves those darling little sentence parts called prepositions.

Stick with me, I think you'll appreciate this.

Prepositions are now okay to end sentences with this is a tale of broken changed or discarded rules a couple of years ago merriam-webster issued an edict on instagram of all literary ironies that it is now okay to end a sentence with a preposition.

I don't know if your earth shattered, but mine sure did. Until, that is, I read and re-read with incredulity Columbia University Associate Professor of Linguistics John McWhorter's op-ed piece in the New York Times against the sentence-ending preposition rule.

Essentially, if this is okay with Professor McWhorter, it's okay with me, although not without a little resistance on my part, because old habits die hard.

You know, rules are rules until they're not, but dealing with them after that is another story. Schooled in the 1950s and 1960s in what I'm confident would be considered by scholars a robust and rigorous public school education, followed by a beautiful liberal arts and humanities degree and all that on top of my upbringing by two self-educated parents who wrote beautifully, my father in three languages no less, I was at ease with the strict regulations regarding prepositions.

Doesn't for whom the bell tolls sound so much better than who the bell tolls for?

End of discussion, maybe.

Truth be known, I was a stickler for that in the two leadership and communication graduate courses, which I taught for 15 years at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

I ran out a lot of red ink correcting papers with sentence ending prepositions alone, not to mention split infinitives, singular-plural agreement, spelling out of single-digit numbers, and a mix of caps and no caps, and headlines and titles, and yadda But the one that's dying hard is the prepositions at the end of the sentence.

Regarding our prepositions, those humble connectors of space, time, nouns, and pronouns, and the importance of which cannot be overstated, but is commonly taken for granted, is a delicious story, not necessarily verifiable in all its details, but delicious nonetheless, involving Winston Churchill.

It's not that this story didn't happen, it's just that every credible source has variations of it. In any event, it seems that old Winnie, as King George VI liked to refer to his prime minister, got into a tiff, quite a tiff, with one of his editors or speechwriters or proofreaders. you see what I mean about variable, verifiable, one of them, who insisted on prohibiting prepositions, ending sentences, and kept sending Churchill's drafts back to him with comments that further elevated Churchill's temperature.

When Churchill, who knew English grammar as well as anyone who ever spoke the language but who also took great pride in his individual style and had enough he took the draft that was returned to him by this guy and he wrote in it in the margin this is the bloody sort of nonsense up with which i will not put this is the bloody sort of nonsense up with which i will not put.

Not only do you have to be a skilled linguist to say that, you have to have a sense of humor. And oh, did he ever.

He returned it once and for all.

And I dare say that it's conceivable that Churchill also used a more colorful word than nonsense.

But that shall forever remain in the shadows of history.

Do you know that English is the most spoken language on earth. More people speak English as a first, second, or third language than any other, by far.

And when you count mother tongue, principal language, or official second language of no less than 56 countries, the impossible to arrive at figure is a guess of about 3 billion, probably more. Two major forces invaded the British Isles, the Norse in the 10th century and the Normans in the 11th, 1066, a date we all know from history.

And when larger, stronger forces invade, then the native language is usually the one to disappear. With English, it was just the other way around.

How did a language that nearly went extinct just a millennium ago become so dominant? How did a geographically limited language, it was limited to Northumbria in Northern England, spoken by as few as, an estimate, maybe 30,000 people, how did it spread so far? How did the language that survived the invasions of the bigger, stronger Norse and Normans come to dominate all others?

Think about being porous, flexible, creative, and forgiving.

English is, and always was, open to including words from other languages. As a result, English is really good at making them fit in or making the language around them fit in.

English is highly creative, creating more new words and idiomatic expressions each year than all other languages combined. And English allows, much more liberally, common usage becoming accepted as formal rules. Like now, for instance, with prepositions ending sentences.

So thanks, Merriam-Webster. We've got lots to thank you for.

So with that word of appreciation to Merriam-Webster, let me turn back to you, my dear listeners, and ask you to consider what you've heard in this episode.

Part of the reason for all of this is that English is also a very playful language.

And if you go back and think about your writing teachers, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

I think it's also ironic, as I stated earlier, that Merriam-Webster released their decision on Instagram a medium not necessarily known for erudite writing perhaps they were saying something to us there too and you can go back to many of the episodes on this podcast to see how I feel about good writing so once again thanks Merriam-Webster we've got lots to thank you for i'm going to take a break now and be back in a little while right now we'd like you to hear from one of our sponsors and we'd like you to please consider two things number one we have sponsorships available and if you'd like to sponsor this podcast we'd like to hear from you before we go any further i want thank our sponsors, SingleTask, Kardam Consulting, Bergen Volunteers, and Stephen Bozer.

We are grateful for their support. And to all of you who listen, if you enjoy Vantage Point, please follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and leave us a comment. It means a lot, and it helps us grow. Okay, here I am. I'm back. Guess what? I told you I would be, and I am.

In the great minds section, which encompasses a great big what if, I want to talk about Dwight David Eisenhower, who made his mark on history by being a great strategist and a great administrator.

Ike, as he came to be called in the United States, was born on October 14th, 1890. This yesterday was his birthday.

Eisenhower was an incredibly practical man.

And he said, in preparing for battle, I've learned that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

And he further enlightened that thought by saying that plans are fine until a fighting starts.

If you've been in battle situations, if you've been in the marketplace competing heavily against your competitors, if you've been on the professional or the amateur playing field, you know that Ike was right. Plans are fine until the fighting starts.

Be that as it may, he never lost his optimism, realistic optimism, when he said pessimism never won any battle.

As my family and I stood in so many places along the 65 miles of beaches that comprise Normandy, which we did on the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

We came to realize the weight of it all.

Eisenhower, who up until the end of World War I had never commanded, he never had command of a unit or a front, but he was given that command and came through I don't know if this occurred to him but the guy who he was fighting nose to nose Field Marshal Erwin Rommel who was clearly up until that point the most accomplished general alive on Earth.

Given the circumstances on the morning of June 6th, 1944, the Allies had no business thinking that they were going to win that day.

But they did.

When the invasion was launched on that morning And the Germans in their pillboxes up on the bluffs of Normandy, of the North Sea, the English Channel, realized it. They began to send their messages back up the chain of command. But Rommel, the most accomplished general in history up until that point, or certainly alive on Earth, was not allowed to take charge of the tanks and ammunitions that were only 18 miles away.

Because Adolf Hitler was a micromanager and would have no decisions made without his consent. And he was asleep at 5 o 'clock in the morning with strict instructions not to be awakened until he woke up that day.

The information had to go from the front up to Rommel, up to his boss, von Rundstedt, up to his boss, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler was asleep.

Von Rundstedt was in Paris buying shoes for his wife.

And Rommel was unable to make the decision that a lieutenant should have been able to make.

Meanwhile, the Allies invading were able to make decisions, were able to ad lib, and that day was a success. We lost an awful lot of people who are rightfully and beautifully memorialized in the American Cemetery at Colleville, but we won that day and went on 11 months later to win the war.

What if Eisenhower did not have the trust of Roosevelt, Marshall, Churchill, King George VI, the way Adolf Hitler would not give his trust to any of his underlings?

Think that one over.

I'm going to go straight to my two aphorisms for the day.

I've kept your attention long enough let me knock it off with this focus not as much on what your eye can see but on what your mind can imagine you know who's good at doing that?

Children and aphorism number two when opportunity knocks Knox, it doesn't wait around very long for your answer.

I'll let you think that one over, and I'll thank you again for being with us. Hope we continue to fulfill your expectations.

And we look forward to bringing you some great episodes in the near future. I'm L.A. Amdur. Thanks again for listening. See you next time. Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.