How to (almost) never end a sentence

I regularly read sentences that end with prepositions – words like “in” and “for,” which many of us remember being told never to end a sentence with.

Yes, I am officially a rule-breaker. “With” is another preposition, and whenever possible, I recommend reworking a sentence to avoid ending a sentence with one. This is part of what we do when editing or proofreading – both processes that we take very seriously at Goff & Howard.

However, ending a sentence with a preposition is not grammatically incorrect. The Gregg Reference Manual, Goff & Howard’s preferred style guide, tells us to “use good sense in deciding whether or not to end a sentence with a preposition.”

Sir Winston Churchill even left us with some common sense on the subject. In 1948, an editor supposedly reworked one of Churchill’s sentences to avoid ending it with a preposition. Churchill replied: “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”*

His point rings as true today as it did 62 year ago. If trying to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition makes the sentence awkward, keep the preposition at the end of the sentence.

*Some historians disagree on Churchill’s exact wording. A few variations of the quote exist, but they are similar to this one.

Rock Head PR Move: Proofing nightmare

An advertiser’s worst nightmare hit South Bend, Indiana, when a billboard promoting the city’s public schools urged people to look at the “15 best things about our pubic schools.” The oversight of mistaking “pubic” for “public” is even worse when it’s written in three-foot-tall letters near a busy intersection and for an educational institution.

A picture of the flawed billboard circulated around Facebook before Blue Waters Group, the company that created the billboard, claimed responsibility for the proofing error and fixed the billboard.

While the Blue Waters Group made the right PR move by admitting its fault, it is no doubt wishing it would have caught the error in the first place.

Read more from the South Bend Tribune.

(Photo courtesy of the South Bend Tribune)

Rock Head PR Move: Freshly Ground Proofreader

A proofreader for Penguin Group Australia must have been snoozing on the job when he or she missed an incomprehensible and grievous error. A recipe in the cookbook, the Pasta Bible, called for “freshly ground black people” instead of “freshly ground pepper.” What the publishing company called a “silly mistake” will end up costing it 20,000 Australian dollars ($18,500) in reprinting costs and thousands of words of international bad press.

Penguin Group should have hired a better proofreader, like ours.

Click here to read more.