Quote:
Originally Posted by Livia
For a start, you ended this sentence with a preposition.
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I'm was aware of that before I posted it, so I googled that first,
"Stranded prepositions are nothing to fret about
There are numerous myths relating to grammatical dos and don’ts, many of which were drummed into us at school. The one that stubbornly refuses to budge from my mind is the diktat ‘never begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but’. And why not, pray?*
Some of these groundless rules (termed ‘fetishes’ by Henry Fowler in 1926) have a long history. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, some notable writers (aka Latin-obsessed 17th century introverts) tried to make English grammar conform to that of Latin – hence the veto on split infinitives and also the ruling against the ending of a sentence with a preposition (also called stranding or deferring a preposition).
These and other language myths are amazingly persistent, though, so who you gonna call? Oxford’s Myth Debunkers, of course! To kick off this occasional series, let’s try to zap the one about stranded prepositions and lay it to rest once and for all."
et cetera
19-12-2013, 10:44 PM
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