Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for December 13, 2016

Grammar court right next to the food court and tennis court.

He was guilty of everything but that, and now he’s also guilty of that.

I think I had her for sophomore English. Now I proofread everything I read, and use Calibre to fix it. Reading takes a while.

He and Yoda should bond really well.

“…there are some things up with which I will not put!"

—-Churchill

Jo, I thought we were called common taters…..And gentlemen, please cover up your dangling participles……

The idea of not ending a sentence with a preposition came from a bunch of elitists who were smitten with Latin in the late 19th century. Lest we forget “Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be. It killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing me”

NEVER use a preposition to end a sentence up with!“Mommy, what did you bring the book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?”

Dang it Dogsniff! That line was the one I was looking for when I was posting before above

As a professional editor, this is one myth that just won’t die. None of the grammar style guides has ever condemned the use of a preposition at the end of a sentence. This is a remnant of 19th Century classism and gatekeeping meant to prevent poor whites from donning fancy clothing to try to pass themselves off as rich folk. (Obviously, nothing was needed to keep people of color at bay.) This is just one of the few remaining convoluted rules of grammar designed to spot an imposter. Please, let it die.

The Grammar Nazis are write wing extremists.

As Winston Churchill said, “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Judge: Next case – “Mr. Split Infinitive.”

@ dot-the-I

Don’t worry, Mr. Split Infinitive plans to boldly state his case, or so I’ve heard.

Latin is alive and well and living in Science, Medicine, the Law and at the root of many English words.

Is it just coincidence that the “judge” bears a disturbing resemblance to the stereotypical cartoon “grammar” (grandma)?

The judge looks like somebody’s Grammer.

My mum is alive and well.

I used to be an English teacher and one of my favorite sentences ends in five consecutive prepositions!

Child to father at bedtime: “What did you bring that book I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”

“Six months of diagramming sentences! Next case!”

There are at least two alleged English grammar rules that originated with nitwits that put so much effort into learning Latin that they failed to learn all of their native language:

Never split an infinitive. (E.g., “to boldly go” is perfectly good English even if you couldn’t say that in Latin. Whether to use that or “to go boldly” is a stylistic choice, not a matter of grammar.)

Never end a sentence with a preposition. The nitwits that invented that rule not only failed to understand certain English grammatical constructions, but they couldn’t even write a rule that accomplished what they intended – as numerous comedians have pointed out, any “violation” of that rule can be cured by adding “a**hole” to the end of the sentence.

The end of a sentence is not a good place to put a preposition at.

It’s always a good idea to never split infinitives. Be aware of clauses modifying sentences. Verbs should matches their antecedents. About sentence fragments. And don’t verb nouns. Its also a good idea to use the proper modifier in it’s place. This sentence no verb.

That sounds like a lot of onomatopoeia to me.

I end my sentences with punctuation such as a period or question mark.

He’l still get the last word in.

Here are the results of my research on the Churchill “quote.”http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html

This is number 2 on my list of non-errors.http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html#preposition

“Hey, that I’m not guilty of, jerk!"

Parent goes upstairs to read their child a bedtime story, but brings the wrong book. Child says, “What did you bring the book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?”

Hey, of that I’m not guilty.

I am not a grammar nazi, I am anti-alt-write

A little like Yoda-Speak, to me it sounds!

Interesting! All these comments and no reminded us that the rule is a myth! There are plenty of cases where ending in preposition is perfectly OK. Like: “What are you afraid of?” I found scores of examples when I looked this up. For those of you who need some wierd authority to back this up, check out the folks with Oxford.

Pre position: “because it is supposed to be positioned to come before the prepositional phrase.” Old Latin superstitution of no relevance to English.

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mommapat, Night-Gaunt49, and marylc

Old English is a Germanic language: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, etc. and its basic structure is essentially Germanic, as are the most commonly used spoken words. However, most of the modern English words in the dictionary are from Latin, if not Greek through Latin, roots by way of the 1066 invasion. As a result, we have something of a hodgepodge language, which is why it is so difficult to learn fluently as a second (or worse language. Grammar is learned easily, exceptions to those rules are harder. Building a vocabulary takes a lifetime.

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Added to that is the way English builds words German defines it is as few words as possible, removes the spaces, and it is a new word. French gives it to ‘Academie Française to debate and a decade later is is an official French word and can be used in legal documents. English looks around and finds a language that has a word of it, and steals it. Unfortunately, if it is a Roman alphabet language (as most are) they keep the same spelling and mispronounce it horribly or spell it phonetically and lose all track of its origins that anchors the definition. And that doesn’t even get into rules for plurals and such.