callas@eris.DEC (The tea leaves never lie) (03/31/85)
This is a general question about ending sentences with
prepositions. It formally appears to be an illegitimate deed,
but such forms are universally spoken and otherwise used.
It is most definitely not wrong to end a sentence with a
preposition.
Did those constructs officially (whatever that means) become an
accepted standard? How is that treated in ole England? Does Ms.
Thatcher use the title phrase as freely as Reagan?
Here is an excerpt from one of Dorothy L. Sayers' essays
on language. I hope this will answer your question:
"There are pedants, God mend their ears, who, having read some
cheap-jack, rule-of-thumb, cramp-wit folly in a sixpenny
text-book, would like to break our free idiom to the bit of an
alien fashion. These are not the Latinists (who know better),
but the Latinizers; they remember the Latin bones of our
language, and will have them dry bones. These are the pinching
misers, who will hoard their gold, but will not put it out to
gain. Of such are dreary little men who write to the papers
protesting -- in the teeth of Chaucer, Bacon, Shakespeare,
Jonson, the English Bible, Milton, Burton, Congreve, Swift,
Burke, Peacock, Ruskin, Arnold and the whole tradition of
English letters -- that a sentence must not end in a
preposition. This is no matter of syntax; it is a matter of
idiom; and the freedom to handle our prepositions is among the
most glorious in our charter of liberties. Here are a few
sentences which let these pedagogues take and re-write after
their own fashion, and then ask themselves if it is written in
English:
Is any song worth singing? That depends on what
language it is written in, what music it is sung to and
what the song is about.
England is a land worth living in, worth singing
of, worth fighting and dying for, and to betray her is
a sin such as the sun might fear to look upon.
Let us have as many defenders as are ready to come
and the ranks have room for, since so great a menace is
not to be trifled with."
DLS in "The English Language"