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Dear BPE: It’s OK to Break the Rules!

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You’ve probably heard the saying that you should learn the rules before you break them. Well, English professors know the rules of language, and I received an impassioned e-mail from one about breaking a few so-called rules that doubles as a history lesson (and if you’re already a rule breaker, it may alleviate any residual grammar guilt):

I just discovered your terrific blog. In addition to teaching technical writing, I also do technical editing, so I am very interested in your posts.

As I was reading through some of your back posts, I found one called “When to Break the Rules.” Let me encourage you not to feel hesitant about the issues that you mention in that post. First, none of them are “grammar”—they are “usage” issues. Second, they are not rules—they are “usage opinions.” Third, I don’t know where the “don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction” idea came from, but it is very clear where the other two opinions originated.

Some believe that the prohibition against “split infinitives” came from the British clergyman Henry Alford and his 1863 book A Plea for the Queen’s English, though this idea might have come into popularity earlier and from some other source. No one knows for sure.

However, we do know, almost certainly, that the impetus against “stranding the preposition” at the end of a sentence (or clause) came from John Dryden, beginning in about 1672.

The motivation for both of these nonrules was to segregate lower-class speakers and writers, who spoke the lower-class dialects, from the upper class, who spoke and wrote “correctly.” In other words, wealthy British snobs didn’t want their speaking and writing to sound like the writing of people they considered to be socially inferior. It had nothing to do with grammar.

All of these things being true, it is easy to see why we today should not, in our writing, be enslaved to petty, two-hundred-year-old and three-hundred-year-old British usage opinions. It is even more important for us not to teach this nonsense to our students. We have a “golden opportunity” to break the cycle so they won’t be indoctrinated by these incorrect ideas and have to “unlearn” them like so many of the older generations have.

So, don’t be afraid to put those prepositions at the end of your sentences—it never was wrong, and it never will be.

Best wishes,
Tim


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