Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lsuc.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!msb From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Re: Re: Grammatical Rules Message-ID: <385@lsuc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 10-Feb-85 18:15:58 EST Article-I.D.: lsuc.385 Posted: Sun Feb 10 18:15:58 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Feb-85 20:16:26 EST References: <34@gitpyr.UUCP> <328@scc.UUCP> <259@psivax.UUCP><537@unc.UUCP> <2289@mit-hermes.ARPA> Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) Distribution: net Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Lines: 29 Summary: Can somebody VERIFY the Churchill quote please? We've had two versions of Churchill on prepositions ending sentences so far. Neither one agrees exactly with the version* I'd heard of. There must be somebody reading this who has access to a reference that gives the correct and authoritative version. Would they please find it and post it --- quickly, before we have half a dozen more postings on the topic? > > I think Winston Churchill said it best. When told that you should > > not end a sentence with a preposition, he replied: > > > > "This is something up with which I shall not put." > > You've not only misquoted him, you've done it in such a way as to destroy the > whole point of what he was saying. He actually said: > > "[Dangling prepositions] are something up with which I shall not put." *"My" version agrees in spirit with the first one, but amplifies it to "This is the kind of arrant pedantic nonsense up with which..." Since Churchill was one of the greatest English-language-users ever, and prepositions-at-the-end are grammatical English, I'm quite sure that the second person has it wrong. Was anybody bothered by the sentence ending with a preposition in this article? Was anybody bothered by the common-gender-singular "they"? I thought not. Mark Brader