A WORD, PLEASE: An erroneous rule up with which I will not put
A lot of people have heard that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. And of those people, a lot know that this supposed “rule” is bunk. And of those people, many also have heard the famous Winston Churchill quip about the supposed rule: “That is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
Wait. Or is it, “That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”
Wait. Or is it, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put”?
Or maybe it was, “This is nonsense up with which I will not put.”
The famous zinger has been quoted in all these forms and more. I don’t know which I heard first, but I do remember it as a distinctly bonk-myself-on-the-head sort of moment: Why couldn’t I have thought of that? Why can’t I be as clever as Churchill?
Well, apparently not even Churchill was as clever as Churchill. Based on language expert Benjamin J. Zimmer’s research, reported in the linguistics book, “Far From the Madding Gerund,” it looks as though Churchill may have never said this at all.
“I always thought the lack of documentation for this story in any serious works about Sir Winston was suspicious,” writes co-author Geoffrey Pullum in his introduction to the Zimmer piece. The Churchill quote, “is almost certainly a case of fake attribution. Famous people (especially famous men) tend to get notable sayings retrospectively misattributed to them.” The first newspaper citation Zimmer found of the supposed Churchill quote was dated 1942 and was attributed to an unnamed writer for The Strand magazine.
Churchill, too, was a writer for The Strand — a well-known one — so chances are it would have been attributed to Churchill from the get-go, had it been his own.
Pity the poor soul who was robbed of recognition for this clever quote. Prepositions, for those who don’t know, are usually small words such as “at,” “to,” “with,” “in” and “on.” The preposition “links an object (a noun or noun equivalent) to another word in the sentence to show the relationship between them.” Vague, I know, but it’s the best the “Chicago Manual of Style” can do to define this surprisingly slippery part of speech.
Making it even more confusing is the fact that there are really two definitions for “preposition.” If you consult a dictionary or a style book, you’ll see something like the wording above. But consult a tome such as the “Oxford English Grammar,” and you’ll find an important nuance. A preposition, by definition, requires an object: “with him,” “to the movies,” “at the store,” “in the house.”
Suddenly, this business about ending sentences with prepositions comes into a whole new light. A sentence such as, “That’s the house you live in,” separates the preposition “in” from its subject, “the house.” Because, you live in the house.
For clarity’s sake, you always want your object — be it of a verb or of a preposition — to follow as quickly as possible the word that introduces it. Hence the wise advice that you might want to take a second look at any sentence that ends with a preposition.
But that doesn’t mean there’s any rule against it. Indeed, pretty much every grammar book and style guide under the sun agrees that sometimes the preposition really does its best work at the end. And anyone who’d tell you otherwise is spreading the type of misinformation up with which you should not put.