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Merriam-Webster had touched on a stubborn taboo — the practice of ending sentences with prepositions such as to, with, about, upon, for or of — that was drilled into many of us in grade school.
Prepositions aren’t easily defined. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary’s definition of preposition: “a function word that typically combines with a noun phrase to form a ...
Those are the most common prepositions, and typically what we think of when the term comes to mind. But there are over 100 in the English language since there are many ways to demonstrate the ...
Late last month, Merriam-Webster shared the news on Instagram that it’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition. Hats off to them, sincerely. But it is hard to convey how bizarre, to an almost ...
Our example sentences above flummox the Stanford Parser, which fails to analyse "modulo" as a preposition. So if you already knew how to use "modulo", a gold star for you.
But the action being described took less time than reading about it did. All those prepositional phrases slowed the sentence. Yes, nobody would write that way (or so we hope). But it’s a good example ...
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with John McWhorter, Columbia University linguist and New York Times columnist about the recent Merriam-Webster declaration that English sentences may end with prepositions.