Most of What You Think You Know About Grammar Is Wrong
And ending sentences with a preposition is nothing worth worrying about
- By Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellarman
- Illustration by Traci Daberko
- Smithsonian magazine, February 2013, Subscribe
You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
It’s a great story, but it’s a myth. And so is that so-called grammar rule about ending sentences with prepositions. If that previous sentence bugs you, by the way, you’ve bought into another myth. No, there’s nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction, either. But perhaps the biggest grammar myth of all is the infamous taboo against splitting an infinitive, as in “to boldly go.” The truth is that you can’t split an infinitive: Since “to” isn’t part of the infinitive, there’s nothing to split. Great writers—including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne and Wordsworth—have been inserting adverbs between “to” and infinitives since the 1200s.
Where did these phony rules originate, and why do they persist?
For some of them, we can blame misguided Latinists who tried to impose the rules of their favorite language on English. Anglican bishop Robert Lowth popularized the prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition in his 1762 book, A Short Introduction to English Grammar; while Henry Alford, a dean of Canterbury Cathedral, was principally responsible for the infinitive taboo, with his publication of A Plea for the Queen’s English in 1864.
In Latin, sentences don’t end in prepositions, and an infinitive is one word that can’t be divided. But in a Germanic language like English, as linguists have pointed out, it’s perfectly normal to end a sentence with a preposition and has been since Anglo-Saxon times. And in English, an infinitive is also one word. The “to” is merely a prepositional marker. That’s why it’s so natural to let English adverbs fall where they may, sometimes between “to” and a verb.
We can’t blame Latinists, however, for the false prohibition against beginning a sentence with a conjunction, since the Romans did it too (Et tu, Brute?). The linguist Arnold Zwicky has speculated that well-meaning English teachers may have come up with this one to break students of incessantly starting every sentence with “and.” The truth is that conjunctions are legitimately used to join words, phrases, clauses, sentences—and even paragraphs.
Perhaps these “rules” persist because they are so easy to remember, and the “errors” are so easy to spot. Ironically, this is a case where the clueless guy who’s never heard of a preposition or a conjunction or an infinitive is more likely to be right.
As bloggers at Grammarphobia.com and former New York Times editors, we’ve seen otherwise reasonable, highly educated people turn their writing upside down to sidestep imaginary errors. There’s a simple test that usually exposes a phony rule of grammar: If it makes your English stilted and unnatural, it’s probably a fraud.
We can’t end this without mentioning Raymond Chandler’s response when a copy editor at the Atlantic Monthly decided to “fix” his hard-boiled prose: “When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split.”
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Comments (90)
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Your points are well taken and I agree that some people are too uptight when it comes to grammar. Many of your examples are taken from dialogue. Normal speech is much more casual than the written word. I would not complain too loudly if someone ended a spoken sentence with a preposition, however I may judge him or her more severely if he or she had written it.
Posted by Jim Perry on April 27,2013 | 08:43 PM
I think this is technically accurate, but falls short of a real discussion. Beginning sentences with a conjunction has a definite stylistic feel that doesn't match the writing that students are tasked with doing in school...or most formal writing. So, yes, of course there are situations when it's fine to begin a sentence with a conjunction, but it isn't the whole story to convey it as attractive secret knowledge that the concept has no constructive purpose at all.
Posted by Dave on April 14,2013 | 11:59 AM
An article that makes one think, draws on emotions and brings on intelligent debate. 87 well thought out comments and 14,ooo likes on Facebook. Well done! Not too mention, I feel better now about my grammar skills than I have a right to.
Posted by Eric Epstein on March 20,2013 | 09:43 PM
This completely misses the point. Of course infinitives can be split, sentences begun with conjunctions and ended with prepositions. Many Latin writers started sentences with conjunctions, though they could not end them with prepositions nor split infinitives, so it is as preposterous to make that comparison as it is to pray German sentence construction in aid. The point is that, as professional communicators, we should be aiming to convey our message accurately and instantly. For as long as some readers believe these 'rules of grammar' exist and are offended by their fracture, their attention is distracted and the message potentially lost. That is why, however erroneous they may be, we should comply with the conventions. I know how distracting it can be: for example, if I hear something using the words 'data' or 'media' with singular verbs, I do not hear the rest of the sentence - so I am not communicated with.
Posted by Ian MacKellar on March 9,2013 | 12:10 PM
Love this. I remember that "rule" about splitting infinites all the time, and violate it regularly. Now I can sleep at night! ca
Posted by Chris Atkins on March 6,2013 | 08:25 PM
An interesting article with some truth and yet... You say that Shakespeare ignored the "rule" about splitting the infinitive, for example. Try saying this: "To be or to not be, that is the question..." or "To sleep, to, perchance, dream." In fact, in Hamlet's most famous soliloquy in Act III Scene II, there are twelve infinitives and not one is split. It is usually better not to split the infinitive.
Posted by Chrysostom on March 5,2013 | 09:49 AM
This article is sour grapes from those who either just get grammar, or who can't abide being told they're wrong--- about anything. Get over it, you insecure people, and find another target for your indignation.
Posted by Tom Armstrong on February 27,2013 | 09:56 PM
I consider myself reasonably well versed in the rules of grammar, and am generally a traditionalist where grammar's concerned. But some rules (such as the rule against starting a sentence with a conjunction) make little or no sense, and should be consigned to the dustbin of grammatical history. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any rules; it means that we should take a critical eye toward some so-called rules, and, if they lack any logical or practical foundation, we should abandon them.
Posted by Dave on February 27,2013 | 01:16 PM
A Smithsonian reader emailed us to challenge our assertion that "to" isn't part of the infinitive. We ran a posting on The Grammarphobia Blog yesterday with the supporting evidence: http://bit.ly/15JIZwN.
Posted by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman on February 26,2013 | 11:35 AM
"Et tu Brute" is Shakespearean, not Latin, and appears nowhere in the historical record. Suetonius reports the words that Caesar might have said to Brutus as "Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi," a Latin translation of the Greek (which is what educated Romans would speak colloquially) "kai su teknon" - "you too, my son." Of course, that doesn't affect your point in the least - it's just that I believe the Smithsonian mag should check its sources, especially when it comes to such a widely misrecognized quotation.
Posted by GC on February 25,2013 | 10:02 PM
I'm always amused when purists get ruffled about every little infraction. The real keepers of the rules of any given language are the common users not some self-declared owner of the rules. If rules were effective at keeping the status quo, the entire planet would speak the same language, dialect, and accent. It's useless to fight against tide of change.
Posted by steve grotjohn on February 25,2013 | 04:06 PM
The fewer the rules, the lower the standards: the fewer the drop-outs, the larger the pool of qualified teachers, the greater the equality achieved, the fewer the number challenged, the greater the diversity, the greater the check from the government, the happier the teachers' union. California has just dropped eighth grade algebra. Now they seem to be dropping reading for videos. Long ago, US schools stopped distinguishing between objective and subjective pronouns. See Wikipedia on "Dumbing down". Colleges used to be at least remedial high school. They're now converting to student loan mills.
Posted by Jeff Glassman on February 24,2013 | 06:39 PM
There's a difference between knowing these rules but sometimes disregarding them for the sake of elegance, and unconsciously breaking them all the time through ignorance. Arguably, 'to' is part of the English infinitive, since on its own, the other word ('go') would not have the meaning of an infinitive, but of an imperative, or of a first person singular present. 'To go' is two words making up one unit of meaning. It can be worth splitting this infinitive for stylistic reasons. But knowing the rules is still important for anyone who wants to knowingly break them.
Posted by M Marsden on February 24,2013 | 09:10 AM
You cite the phrase "Et tu, Brute" as an example of starting a sentence with a conjunction. But "et" in this case does not mean "and", it means "even": "Even you, Brutus?". This usage is common in Latin, and I don't think "even" is a conjunction. For what it's worth.
Posted by Sir Huddleston Fuddleston on February 23,2013 | 12:49 AM
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