Conference thebay::joyoflex

524.0. "Preposition At End (Fowler)" by STAR::CALLAS () Thu May 26 1988 23:14

    Here is an excerpt from Fowler's "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage"
    (second edition) from the entry "preposition at end":
    
    	Jon

    
    It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be kept
    true to their name and placed before the word they govern in spite of
    the incurable English instinct for putting them late ('They are the
    fittest timber to make great politics _of_' said Bacon; and 'What are
    you hitting me _for_?' says the modern schoolboy). 'A sentence ending
    in a preposition is an inelegant sentence' represents what used to be a
    very general belief, and it is not yet dead. One of its chief supports
    is the fact that Dryden, an acknowledged master of English prose, went
    through all his prefaces contriving away the final prepositions that he
    had been guilty of in his first editions. It is interesting to find
    Ruskin almost reversing this procedure. In the text of the _Seven
    Lamps_ there is a solitary final preposition to be found, and no more;
    but in later footnotes they are not avoided (Any more wasted words ...
    I never heard of. / Men whose occupation for the next fifty years would
    be the knocking down every beautiful building they could lay their
    hands on). Dryden's earlier practice show him following the English
    instinct; his later shows him sophisticated with deliberate latinism:
    'I am often put to a stand in considering whether what I write to be
    the idiom of my tongue,... and have no other way to clear my doubts but
    by translating my English into Latin'. � The natural inference from
    this would be: you cannot put a preposition (roughly speaking) later
    than its word in Latin, and therefore you must not do so in English.
    Gibbon improved upon the doctrine, and, observing that prepositions and
    adverbs are not always easily distinguished, kept on the safe side with
    _on_, _over_, _under_, or the like, even when they would have been
    adverbs. 
    
    The fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by English in putting
    its prepositions late and omitting its relatives in an important
    element in the flexibility of the language. The power of saying _A
    state of dejection such as they are absolute strangers to_ (Cowper)
    instead of _A state of dejection of an intensity to which they are
    absolute strangers_, or _People are worth talking to_ instead of
    _People with whom it is worth while to talk_, is not one to be lightly
    surrendered. But the Dryden-Gibbon tradition has remained in being, and
    even now immense pains are sometimes expended in changing spontaneous
    into artificial English. _That depends on what they are cut with_ is
    not improved by _That depends on with what they are cut_; and too often
    the lust of sophistication, once blooded, becomes uncontrollable, and
    ends with, _That depends on the answer to the question as to with what
    they are cut_. Those who lay down the universal principle that final
    prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the
    English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used
    freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for
    English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived
    from Latin standards. The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in
    literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained; in respect of
    elegance or inelegance, every example must be judged not by any
    arbitrary rule, but on its own merits, according to the impression it
    makes on the feeling of educated English readers. 
    
    In avoiding the forbidden order, unskillful handlers of words often
    fall into real blunders (see OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN). A few examples of
    bad grammar obviously due to this case may fairly be offered without
    any suggestion that a rule is responsible for all blunders made in
    attempting to keep it. The words in brackets indicate the avoided form,
    which is not necessarily the best, but is at least better than that
    substituted for it: _The War Office does not care, the Disposal Board
    is indifferent, and there is no one_ on whom _to fix the blame or_ to
    hang (no one to fix the blame on or to hang). / _The day begins with a
    ride with the wife and as many others as want to ride and_ for whom
    _there is horseflesh available_ (and as there are horses for). / _This
    was a memorable expedition in every way, greatly appreciated by the
    Japanese, the Sinhalese, the Siamese, and with whomever else B.O.A.C.
    briefly deposited their valuable cargo_ (and whomever else B.O.A.C.
    briefly deposited their valuable cargo with). / It is like the art_ of
    which _Huysmans dreamed but_ never executed (the art that Huysmans
    dreamed of)./ _That promised land_ for which _he was to prepare, but
    scarcely_ to enter (that he was to prepare for). 
    
    It was said above that almost all our great writers have allowed
    themselves to end a sentence or a clause with a preposition. A score or
    so of specimens follow ranging over six centuries, to which may be
    added the Bacon, Cowper, and Ruskin examples already given: (Chaucer)
    But yit to this thing yit another thing y-ijoigned, more to ben
    wondered upon. (Spenser) Yet childe ne kinsman living had he none To
    leave them to. (Shakespeare) Such bitter business as the day Would
    quake to look on. (Jonson) Prepositions follow sometimes the nouns they
    are coupled with. (Bible) I will not leave thee, until I have done that
    which I have spoken to thee of. (Milton) What a fine conformity would
    it all starch us all into. (Burton) Fit for Calphurnius and Democritus
    to laugh at. (Pepys) There is good ground for what he goes about.
    (Congreve) And where those qualities are 'tis pity they should want
    objects to shine upon. (Swift) The present argument is the most
    abstracted that ever I engaged in. (Defoe) Avenge the injuries ... by
    giving them up to the confusions their madness leads them to. (Burke)
    The less convincing on account of the party it came from. (Lamb)
    Enforcing his negation with all the might ... he is master of. (De
    Quincey) The average, the prevailing tendency is what we look at.
    (Landor) The vigorous mind has mountains to climb, and valleys to
    repose in. (Hazlitt) It does for something to talk about. (Mill) We
    have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of.
    (Kinglake) More formidable than any ... that Ibrahim Pasha had to
    contend with. (M. Arnold) Let us see what he amounts to. (Lowell) Make
    them show what they are made of. (Thackeray) So little do we know of
    what we are after. (Kipling) Too horrible to be trifled with. 
    
    If it were not presumptuous, after that, to offer advice, the advice
    would be this: Follow no arbitrary rule, but remember that there are
    often two or more possible arrangements between which a choice should
    be consciously made. If the final preposition that has naturally
    presented itself sounds comfortable, keep it; if it does not sound
    comfortable, still keep it if it has compensating vigour, or when among
    awkward possibilities, it is the least awkward. If the 'preposition' in
    in fact the adverbial particle of a PHRASAL VERB, no choice is open to
    us; it cannon be wrested from its partner. Not even Dryden could have
    altered _which I will not put up with_ to _up with which I will not
    put_. 
    
    � For the pedants here, it is Fowler's practice to put the period
    outside of the quotation. I continued it here. -- /.[

Virtually every schoolboy of my time was familiar with Sir Winston 
Churchill's retort when he was taken to task for putting prepositions 
at the ends of sentences:

	" [ That rule ] is a lot of nonsense up with which I will not 
	put."

- Dick