We're starting another post with a joke. The joke works best if you use as upscale and snobby a university you may want to use. Such as Harvard or Yale.
Or if you're in North Carolina, you can use Duke.
A freshman at Duke approaches an upperclassman with an inquiry: "Can you tell me where the library is at?"
The upperclassman responds indignantly, "My dear fellow, you are a student of Duke University, one of the most elite educational institutions in the world and we do not end our sentences with a preposition!"
Which leads the freshman to ask again, "Can you tell me where the library is at, asshole!"
<rim shot>
Except that joke may be lost to the ages.
Recently Merriam-Webster recently weighed with this proclamation: "Ending a sentence with a preposition (such as with, of, and to) is permissible in the English language. It seems that the idea that this should be avoided originated with writers Joshua Poole and John Dryden, who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong."
Regarding the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, Winston Churchill is famous for saying "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Which is funny and clever as hell.
Too bad there is no record that Churchill ever said that.
Well, as far as we know.
Who knows what Churchill muttered to himself while sitting on a toilet.
Loosening up the rules also helps avoid nonsense like the example in the graphic below.
I am all in favor of a more flexible take on grammar. The rules of grammar are no some sacrosanct proclamation from God.
All language is made up by people who needed specific sounds to call things and the rules help us to agree on what sounds mean what things.
But language is not static but is perpetually a work in progress.
That being said, I personally draw the line at ending a sentence with "at".
Which I just did.
So never mind.
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