Is It Wrong to End a Sentence With a Preposition?

In school, you were taught that the rules of grammar should never be violated: use apostrophes to connote possession, join two ideas using a semicolon, and never end a sentence with a preposition.

Unlike apostrophe usage, however, sticking closely to the preposition rule can sometimes make sentences clunky or confusing. The truth is that including a preposition at the end of a sentence is not always bad grammar. In fact, the anti-preposition rule is largely a myth.

Introduction to Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

A preposition is a word that connects a verb, noun, or adjective with a noun or pronoun, showing the relationship between the two or another element in that same clause or sentence. In the sentence, “The cat sat between the two trees,” the word “between” is a preposition because it establishes how one noun (the cat) is situated among the other nouns (trees). Prepositions often deal with time and location, such as “behind,” “after,” or “over.”

It's useful to have a go-to rule for determining whether a given word is a preposition. One option is to place the word in this sentence: “The mouse goes ______ the box.” If the word makes sense in the sentence, then it is a preposition. However, if a word does not fit, it may still be a preposition — for instance, prepositions like “according to” or “notwithstanding."

Prepositional phrases are groupings of at least two words, consisting of, at minimum, the preposition and the object of the preposition, aka, the noun it precedes. For example, “near the ocean,” “without gluten,” and “before bed” are all prepositional phrases.

Origins of the Preposition Rule

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