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Grammar 4 min read

The Made-Up Grammar Rule You Learned in School

At some point you’ve probably been corrected for ending a sentence with a preposition — words such as “with,” “to,” or “about.” Maybe a teacher even circled it in red ink. There’s just one problem: This is a 17th-century misunderstanding that was never meant to be a hard-and-fast rule in

English. The myth stems from centuries of trying to force English to behave like Latin, a language with completely different grammar. Modern style guides and dictionaries overwhelmingly agree that ending a sentence with a preposition is perfectly acceptable. Even distinguished writers such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen regularly ended sentences...

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