Churchill and the Greatest Untrue Grammar Story Ever Told

 

An L.A. Times reader a while back wrote in the letters section a little story about sentence-ending prepositions: “An editor once rewrote a sentence of Winston Churchill's in which Churchill ended a sentence with a preposition,” the reader noted in the paper’s letters section. “Churchill reportedly fired back, ‘This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put!’"

That’s a great story, as delightful as the grammar rule that elicited it. Unfortunately, both are pure myth.

Variations on the Churchill story have been circulating for a long time, for obvious reasons. It’s fun to retell. In the most popular version, however, Churchill wasn’t against sentence-ending prepositions. He was for them. The quip, as the story usually goes, was actually a rant against editors who would twist a sentence into ugly knots simply to avoid a preposition at the end. 

So the Times reader who told this story seems to have gotten the moral backwards. But his errors don’t end there. 

In recent years, researchers have determined that Churchill probably never said any such thing. Instead, the quip probably came from an unbylined writer for the Strand magazine and was later misattributed to Churchill, who also wrote for the Strand. 

And what about the rule itself? Here are the experts on that alleged rule. 

“Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than anywhere else.” -- William Strunk Jr., “The Elements of Style”

“The preposition at the end has always been an idiomatic feature of English. It would be pointless to worry about the few who believe it is a mistake.” -- Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage 

“Superstition.” -- H.W. Fowler, author of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

“Good writers don’t hesitate to end their sentences with prepositions if doing so results in phrasing that seems natural.” -- Garner’s Modern American Usage

“‘Never end a sentence with a preposition.’ … Wrong.” -- Washington Post Business Copy Desk Chief Bill Walsh

“Good writers throughout the history of English -- from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Alison Lurie and David Lodge -- have not shrunk from ending clauses or sentences with prepositions.” -- “Word Court” author Barbara Wallraff 

“For years and years Miss Thistlebottom has been teaching her bright-eyed brats that no writer would end a sentence with a preposition if he knew what he was about. The truth is that no good writer would follow Miss Thistlebottom’s rule. -- Theodore M. Bernstein, “The Careful Writer”

 

 

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