# Which is grammatically correct? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 15, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794 "2019-01-15T13:51:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/1 "2019-01-15T13:51:18Z")
Just noticed the sig line for Dopers \*\*alpha twit \*\*. It reads "“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” Shouldn’t it read, " "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit " ?? It is a beautiful sentiment and I am in no way calling out our fellow Doper or trying to be snarky. I am honestly curious as to the proper form. Does anyone know? ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/2 "2019-01-15T14:10:19Z")
By which standard? This is the old “don’t end a sentence with a preposition” adage. In daily speech and informal writing we do it all the time, so it’s grammatical by those standards. By other (very formal) standards the second way is considered “correct.” Take your pick. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/3 "2019-01-15T14:45:46Z")
And before anyone trots out the quote which is commonly attributed to Winston Churchill regarding this, I’d just point out that it actually is mistaken, because–the way it’s typically phrased–it conflates prepositions with phrasal verb particles. In fact, I believe the reason English behaves this way is precisely because of phrasal verbs. The word _ **in** _ in **alpha** ’s quote is not a particle of a phrasal verb, but it “masquerades” as one, in that it wants to stick to the verb _ **sit** _, rather than be front-loaded in the clause. I suggest this is the influence of phrasal verbs, (though I don’t know how it could be "proved), because other languages don’t do this, as far as I know. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/4 "2019-01-15T14:59:30Z")
William Safire’s first fumblerule of grammar was “Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.” ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/5 "2019-01-15T19:34:24Z")
The more interesting question is what the word “correct” really means. When a grammatical question like this comes up, descriptivist linguists will point out that we end sentences with a proposition all the time, noting examples in formal contexts, in widely acknowledged great literature, in the writing of the person advocating the adage, etc. - and therefore conclude that the “rule” is nonsense. Language is defined only by empirical rules, and there is no empirical rule in English that you can’t put a preposition at the end of a sentence. Somebody with poor observational skills pulled this “rule” out of their ass at some point in history, and it somehow gained traction like a meme. Prescriptivists will then counter with: you descriptivists seem to be saying that _anything goes_, that just because a native speaker says or writes something, then it’s automatically valid and okay. That can’t be right - it seems like linguistic anarchy. Surely there _must_ be rules. And of course there are rules, it’s just that _this_ is not a rule. Take another trivial rearrangement of the words in that sentence, for example: > [@](#): > > A society grows great when old men \*\*_trees plant_ whose shade they know they shall never sit in. _Every_ native speaker of any dialect of English agrees that this word order is wrong. So that is clearly a rule of English. And in fact, out of all the possible rearrangements of the word order in that sentence, 99% of them are universally agreed to be wrong by all native speakers. So there are many strict rules for making a grammatically correct sentence English, and all these rules are universally acknowledged and unconsciously followed flawlessly by all English speakers. But there is never much cause to discuss them, because it’s so obvious to all of us what’s right and what’s wrong. When a purported rule is actually brought up for explicit discussion with a question like - “grammar experts, tell me which is correct!” - well, you can predict that with high probability there is no strict rule for what’s under consideration, it’s unlikely that either form is definitively “wrong”. Both variants _must_ be prevalent in the language to some degree, otherwise the question of which is correct simply wouldn’t arise (unless a non-native speaker were asking). So it’s unlikely that there will be a valid response that only one form is definitively correct. The likely conclusion might be that only one form _was_ historically correct, but the language has changed; or that they are differences among dialects; or that one is stylistically preferred in certain contexts, a question of register. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/6 "2019-01-15T19:42:43Z")
Either form is fine grammatically. If you want to sound more informal and colloquial, go with the first. If you want to be formal, go with the second. The idea that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition in English is mostly grammatical superstition. Sometimes moving it from the end of the sentence will aid in clarity. Most of the time, in my experience, it doesn’t make a whit of difference and, frankly, changing it to the more formal construction makes it sound stilted and uneuphonious to me. [Oxford dictionaries](https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/28/grammar-myths-prepositions/) is fine with it. Even H.W. Fowler, a leading English grammarian had this to say about it all the way back in 1926: > [@](#): > > It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be kept true to their name and placed before the word they govern in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late. . . . The fact is that. . . . even now immense pains are sometimes expended in changing spontaneous into artificial English. . . . Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are ‘inelegant’ are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards. The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained. . . . > In avoiding the forbidden order, unskillful handlers of words often fall into real blunders. . . . (473-474) [From here](http://grammartips.homestead.com/prepositions2.html). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/7 "2019-01-15T20:02:05Z")
We could probably provide dozens of cites that it’s not incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition in English. I’ll just contribute this one more: > **[Prepositions, Ending a Sentence With](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with)** > > Yes, you can end a sentence with a preposition ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/8 "2019-01-15T20:04:53Z")
Some people may object to using “whose” to refer to something other than a person. If you really want to get formal and stilted try A society grows great when old men plant trees in the shade of which they know they shall never sit. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2019, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/9 "2019-01-15T21:38:19Z")
Trees the shade of which is never sat upon by those whose actions were causative of the planting thereof are causative of an increase in the greatness of societies that contain them therein. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/10 "2019-01-16T00:19:44Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > The more interesting question is what the word “correct” really means. True–and while your explanation to that question is probably the best we’ve had in while–it almost always comes down to someone saying the same thing, just not so well. So for me, a truly more interesting question is the specifics of this particular case. Why does English have this tendency to avoid front-loading prepositions with these subordinate clauses, when just about every other language with similar grammatical origins sticks to it? ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2019, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-grammatically-correct/827794/11 "2019-01-16T00:21:23Z")
I am grateful and utterly fascinated by these answers. 🙂