Why do so many people use a preposition with which to end a sentence? [duplicate]

Question

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When is it okay to end a sentence in a preposition?

I see it a lot, even though my elementary teacher told me it is wrong. This is probably a new development, a sign that our language is in decay. Soon none of us will be able to understand each other. But this sloppiness is a disaster, up with which I will not put.

What are your own experiences with this terrible phenomenon? How may we roll it back? Should moderators strike out at such language abuse? What do you do to correct your friends, family, and colleagues? Do you leave them notes, too? Voice mails? Should all existing literature be corrected and republished as well, the old editions burned?

Answer 1

I remember hearing the same rule. However, according to Oxford Dictionary and Wikipedia, there is no such rule. Sometimes insisting on placing the preposition anywhere other than at the end is very awkward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences#Ending_sentence_with_preposition

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/153

Answer 2

The reason it is or once was "grammatical taboo" was due to the concept of a prepositional phrase. When one has a prepositional phrase, a preposition is followed by a number of adjectives, and a noun which is the object of the prepositional phrase. If the preposition ends the sentence though, one has a prepositional phrase missing it's object -- which some consider(ed) to be an issue.

However, in modern English, (for the most part) this rule has gone the way of the dodo, just like the rule prohibiting split infinitives. I for one still generally try to avoid ending sentences with prepositions, because such sentences are generally better constructed with the preposition moved somewhere else. However, there are some constructs which can make it difficult to move the preposition elsewhere -- in which case I would simply leave it at the end.