About those prepositions at the end of a sentence...

If you've looked at my blog recently, you may have noticed that I went on a rant a few hours ago about people ending their sentences with the word "at," which is completely awful because it goes beyond the rule about ending your sentences with prepositions because it doesn't belong in a sentence beginning with the word "where."

Someone in the comments brought to my attention the fact that the whole no-prepositions-at-the-end-of-a-sentence thing is not actually a rule anymore.

I missed that somewhere along the line.

The website that commenter Lee Seitz provided was the work of Grammar Girl: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition?page=2.

The basic summary is that people were traditionally taught not to end sentences with prepositions, but nowadays most grammarians say it's okay. Why? For the same reason I usually ignore the rule: Nobody talks that way.

Astounded, I went to my bookshelf to research this rule a bit and see if everyone is in agreement on this.

My go-to guide for writing and grammar things is Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (4th ed.), and they have this to say on the matter:

Years ago, students were warned not to end a sentence with a preposition;

time, of course, has softened that rigid decree. Not only is the preposition

acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than

anywhere else. "A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool he murdered

her with." This is preferable to "A claw hammer, not an ax, was the

tool with which he murdered her." Why? Because it sounds more

violent, more like murder. A matter of ear. (77-78)

So I'm not insane- the preposition rule was once a thing. But do people still consider it a thing? Which people? What would my professors say?

I went to the writing handbook that my university uses as a textbook in the 100 level English classes to see if the preposition rule is still a thing here. It's the University of Alabama's version of A Writer's Reference (7th ed.) with Writing in the Disciplines. We fondly refer to it as the Hacker Handbook, since it's written by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers. 

As a fun side note, I never actually bought this book because I didn't take EN 101 here (AP credit- it's cool!). I was actually visiting one of my professors about a paper and he just gave me his older copy when I told him I didn't have one. Pretty cool. He's an awesome guy.

I looked at the sections about prepositions in the Hacker Handbook, and neither section said anything about the placement of prepositions at the end of a sentence. I guess it's really, really not a thing anymore.

Although I'm personally still going to stick to the rule in academic writing whenever it's reasonable to do so, because while the rule may be what Grammar Girl calls a "myth," it's a very widely believed one, and I don't want to lose points on a paper for something as dumb as prepositions.

But let's get one thing straight, people: It is still very, very, veeeery wrong to end your sentence with the word "at" in cases like the ones I discussed in my previous rant. In fact, it's also usually wrong to end your sentence with the word "to" for the very same reason. It doesn't belong in the sentence. It has no purpose. It's unnecessary. You don't need it. You're wasting your breath and printer ink.

 So end your sentence with "from," "on," and "with" all you want-

Kick "at" to the curb.

(And his equally useless friend "to.")

WARNING: Grammar Rant

Nobody likes a Grammar Nazi. I know this. And I try really, really hard. I do. I've gotten really good at not correcting people's grammar over the years. And this is a good thing.

Because people make mistakes, you know? Slip of the tongue, brain fart, typo- honest mistakes that everyone makes. Even me. So I cut people a break. Because people are human, and nobody likes a Grammar Nazi.

I feel pretentious even talking about grammar. Like I said, I make mistakes, too. Nobody's perfect. But I feel like I just care about grammar a lot more than some people do... maybe that just comes from being an English major? Maybe that's why I'm an English major? I don't know. I couldn't recognize a foul in football, but comma splices rarely elude me. That's just how my brain works.

Long story short: Bad grammar bothers me, I'm sincerely sorry if that annoys you, and now I'm going to talk about grammar that annoys me a whole lot.

So there's this rule in the English language that you're not supposed to end sentences with a preposition.

Prepositions are words like up, over, on, in, out, with, at, from...

You know what, forget it. Schoolhouse Rock does it best.

Yay! Prepositions.

So like I said: the official rule of prepositions is that they must never be the last word of a sentence.

So instead of saying, "Which bench did you sit on?" you're supposed to say, "On which bench did you sit?"

Except people don't really talk like that. Sentences like "On which bench did you sit?" sound overly formal and rather like they're spoken by people who lived hundreds of years ago. So I forgive the breaking of this rule very often and I, myself, break it all the time. The only time I'll pitch a fit about it is in the case of academic writing.

There are just a few exceptions.

For reasons I can't really explain, it drives me up the wall when people end their sentences with the word "at."

"Where did you park at?" "Where is the building located at?" "Where you at?" "Where are the puppies at?" "Do you know where the bathroom's at?"

STAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHP.

...please?

It's hard to say why this preposition bothers me and the others don't (although sometimes I have a real issue with people ending their sentences with "to," as well). I think what gets me is that the word "at" is completely unnecessary in a sentence that already has the word "where" in it.

It's not like "Which bench did you sit on?" in which the preposition is just in the wrong place.

The word "at" does not belong in the sentence "Where did you park?"

At all.

Again: There is no place for the word "at" in that sentence, or in virtually any other sentence that starts with the word "where."

Where did you park? Where is the building located? Where are you? Where are the puppies? Do you know where the bathroom is?

No "at." Ever.

If you think about it, any function the word "at" has is already taken care of by the word "where." So the word "at" is completely useless and unnecessary. Don't let it stay in the sentence just to make it feel better. Get out of here, at.

So when people end their sentences with the word "at," they're saying more words than they have to. They're spending more energy than is necessary, and all that their extra effort gets them is a grammatically incorrect sentence. That's why it bugs me so much.

I know you're all thinking of that old joke right now: "Where did you park at, @%#&$?"

Very funny. Very classy. But still grammatically incorrect.

Grammar Cartoon: Affect and Effect

One of my friends texted me today with some questions about what seemed to be a paper she was writing, and of course I dropped everything to discuss the difference between "affect" and "effect" with her and to describe the different ways those two words can be used.

"Affect" is a verb- if you "affect" something, you have an "effect" on it.

"Effect" is usually a noun. An "effect" is what happens when somebody "affects" something.

("effect" can also be a verb, like to start or to initiate, but this definition was irrelevant to our conversation and I hardly ever see it outside of the phrase "to effect change," so I'm not going into that here)

In the world of cause-and-effect, "affect" is the action someone takes- coincidentally, "affect" and "action" both start with the letter A. Another way to remember it is that somebody must "affect" something in order to have an "effect" on it, so in a way the word "affect" comes first, and A is the first letter of the alphabet.

Naturally, when I tried texting all this to my friend, she got majorly confused, because what the heck did I just say in all that? (and why am I so gleeful to be discussing grammar?) So I scribbled out a quick picture.

My friend is in the band with me, so she knows about our band director, who often requests that we "hustle" to our spots in between each run. He claims that, if we move quickly, we will positively affect the band. He always pronounces the word "affect" like "ay-fect," with a long A sound, emphasizing that the word he is saying starts with the letter A.

So I drew this cartoon:

It's sort of a before-and-after thing. Before the band was positively impacted, the clarinet player had to hustle. By hustling, she affected the band. After she hustled, she could see the positive effect that her hustling had on the band.

I actually think about grammar like this a lot.