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Can I End a Sentence in a Preposition? 514 Views


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Want even more deets on ending a sentence with a preposition? Take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

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Transcript

00:04

Can I End a Sentence in a Preposition? a la Shmoop

00:07

You hear it every morning. You put on your robe, exit your cloistered chambers, greet

00:11

the day with barely-open eyes… and then ask the bishop, “Where is the goat at?”

00:16

And he always responds in that superior tone of his, “He’s probably in school, learning

00:20

how to properly construct a sentence.”

00:23

That bishop can be a real pain sometimes.

00:25

All you want to do is milk a goat to make some yogurt. You don’t want a grammar lesson.

00:29

So, while flagellating yourself in your chambers, you ask the heavens, “Can I end a sentence

00:34

in a preposition?”

00:35

<<booming, God voice>> YES.

00:37

Okay. It’s not quite so simple. There are always exceptions.

00:40

First, what the H-E-double hockey sticks is a preposition?

00:43

A preposition is a word that creates a relationship between two words, usually having to do with

00:49

space or direction, or time.

00:52

For example, The goat went over the fence.

00:55

Over is the preposition, telling what direction the goat went in relation to the fence.

01:01

Another example is: I saw the goat before lunch.

01:05

Before is the preposition, telling when in time the goat was seen.

01:11

Almost all of the time, a preposition needs an object.

01:13

You can’t say: I saw the goat before.

01:15

Before what? Before breakfast? Before the apocalypse?

01:20

However, you don’t need an object if the object is self-explanatory or is elsewhere

01:27

in the sentence.

01:28

For example: What did I just step in?

01:31

If you want to get picky, the one-hundred-percent grammatically correct way to say this is “In

01:38

what did I just step?”

01:40

But no one, not even monks, talk like that. So it’s okay to say “What did I step in?”

01:44

to avoid sounding snooty or pedantic.

01:47

Basically, If there’s no other way to word it without sounding like a person from another

01:52

century, it’s a-ok.

01:55

So is it okay to end a sentence with a preposition?

01:58

Or should we say, what kind of prepositions can you end a sentence with?

02:03

A preposition always needs an object.

02:05

But the object can be elsewhere in the sentence, not just after the preposition.

02:10

If it sounds better with the preposition at the end, then it’s totally fine to do so.

02:15

And you can tell the bishop that, if he has a problem with it, he can talk to US.

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