Huh?
And sorry for the double posting but these 2 questions occured to me at the same time:)
At times (most times, in my opinion), ending a sentance in a preposition can sound stupid. But for the real answer to your question, the reason for any grammar rule is that someone, somewhere once wrote a book on proper grammer and endint a sentance in a preposition was deemed a no-no.
There is nothing better than a preposition to end a sentence with.
– Winston Churchill
Personally, ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I will not put.
Why not use a preposition to end a sentence with?
No reason. It’s not as bad as misspellings.
Most modern usage experts have no problem with ending a sentence with a preposition. It was a rule grammarians came up with for the flimsiest of reasons: the “pre” in “preposition” means “before”; there for a preposition has to come before another word.
Almost as bad as the reason why splitting infinitives was condemned, which was “infinitives in latin are always one word; therefore you shouldn’t split them in English.”
Actually, it is extremely rare for anyone to end a sentence with a preposition. What often looks like a preposition at the end of a sentence is actually a “particle” – part of a multiword verb. Older grammarians didn’t recognize these, but there is a big difference in meaning between “to put” (i.e., “to place”), “to put up” (“to preserve” as in “We put up tomatoes for the winter”), and “to put up with” (“to tolerate”).
As long as the sentence clearly indicates the object of the preposition, most people won’t notice and those who do will be nitpickers.
As with all rules, they can be broken well by those with skill but will assist the person without it to not make stupid mistakes. Generally if you notice that you have ended a sentence with a preposition there is a more elegant way to say what you mean even if you haven’t committed a cardinal sin of grammar. That said, it is folly sabatoge the clarity of a sentence in order to conform to a picky rule. (as friedo demonstrates)
From Beavis and Butthead Do America:
Agent Bork: Chief! Ya know that guy whose camper they were whackin’ off in?
Agent Fleming: Bork, you’re a federal agent! You represent the United States Government! Never end a sentence with a preposition!
Agent Bork: Oh, uh… Ya know that guy in whose camper they… I… I mean, that guy off in whose camper they were whacking?
It’s just one of those generic things that is taught in school. It’s okay to do that with a sentence if you want to.
They taught a lot of stuff in school that you don’t have to follow; but it makes for consistent teaching.
Dystopos said:
I totally agree. The problem is the person without the skill doesn’t know a preposition from a hole in the ground to begin with.
According to a little language seminar I attended recently, things have changed a little. I haven’t looked it up, but supposedly Gregg’s now allows for sentences ending with prepositions. Or should I say, “prepositions are now allowed for.”
Furthermore, when using quotes, such as “this one”, it is now acceptable in many cases to put the comma or period outside of the quotes. I’ve been wrestling with this for a while now, and can’t decide which I prefer.
This reminds me of the young backwoods Virginian on his first day at Harvard. He stopped a distinguished-looking upperclassman and asked, “hey, where’s the library at?”
“Sir,” said the upperclassman, “at Harvard we do not end our sentences with prepositions.”
“Okay,” said the first yearman, “where’s the library at, asshole?”
The rule not to end a sentence with a preposition began around the same time as the “don’t split infinitives” rule, in the 1700’s. Many arbitary rules were devised from Latin grammar, and proper use became a class distinction (this was in England).
Both of those rules came from the application of Latin grammar to English. In Latin you (almost) never end a sentence in a preposition, and it’s impossible to split an infinitive. Of course, actual Roman texts aren’t broken down into sentences, so it’s hard to tell if a preposition ends one 
Here’s a quote from “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker about the period (18th century England):
These trends created a demand for handbooks and style manuals, which were soon shaped by market forces. Casting English grammar into the mold of Latin grammar made the books useful as a way of helping young students learn Latin. And as the competition became cutthroat, the manuals tried to outdo one another by including greater numbers of increasingly fastidious rules that no refined person could afford to ignore."
Arjuna34
Old joke.
Babysitter thinks kid wants story before bed. Kid throws a fit and runs upstairs. B-S follows with book.
Kid says ‘Why’d you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for.’
Generally speaking, if you end a sentence with a preposition, you have done somethimng wrong. That is not always true, especially in questions (in English, questions are distinguished from other sentences by rearranging the word order, which may leave a preposition at the end). The purpose of a preposition is to connect two different parts of speech; e.g. “I put the book on the table”. “on” connects “put”, a verb, with “table”, a noun. Since a preposition connects two words, it generally makes sense to put it between those two words, thus one rarely hears people saying “The table I put the book on” as a sentence. Actually, come to think of it, one might hear that as part of a larger sentence: “I’d like to move the table I put the book on”. Here, the phrase “I put the book on the table” is inserted into a larger sentence, and the order of words in the phrase is changed to denote that the emphasis is not on the fact that I put the book on the table, but instead on that the table is being identified. During this shuffling of words, prepositions often end up at the end of the sentence. Usually this doesn’t lead to ambiguities, but suppose I were to say “I’d like to turn the computer I put the book on”. Do I mean “I’d like to rotate the computer on which I put the book” or “I’d like to turn on the computer on which I put the book”? As a precautionary measure, it is recommended that people not end their sentences with prepositions. A part of speech that is very similar to the preposition is the conjunction. Prepositions connect different parts of speech; conjunctions connect the same part of speech. Isn’t the reason why one shouldn’t end a sentence with a conjunction pretty obvious? “I went to the store, bought some food and.” Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
And here’s another joke:
A prisoner had been in jail for several years, and during this time the warden’s daughter had become very fond of him. The other prisoners pointed out that if he were to marry the warden’s daughter, the warden wouldn’t want a prisoner for a son-in-law, and would use his influence to get him out. The prisoner, however, didn’t find this to be a very good plan because… well, I think you can figure the rest out.
ARGH - what am I missing? He didn’t want to marry the warden’s daughter because…? Jeez, I was so enjoying the thread, and then this. He didn’t like the plan because, then he’d be the warden’s son-in-law? …because…SHIT! I can’t figure it out. He didn’t want to preposition the warden’s daughter? He didn’t want to end his sentence with a proposition? Hey - maybe that’s it? I can use some help here…
Jocelyn Elders lost her job because she refused to end a sentence with a preposition.
When asked about masturbation, she said, “I think this is something that should be taught.” What she meant was “I think this is somthing that should be taught about.” The two sentences have two difference meanings.
Most usage experts will disagree. This is primarily because many prepositions act as verb particles and thus don’t have to have an object. They are the same who would, seeing the sentence “We talked over the problem” would say “over the problem” is a prepositional phrase. In this usage, it is not. You have a simple subject (“We”), verb (“talked over”) and direct object (“the problem”). “To talk over” is a single verb meaning “to discuss.”
Note that in your example, you’re using the verb “to turn on”, not “to turn.” You’re not turning the computer; you’re turning it on – two different things.
It is rare for anyone to end a sentence with a pure preposition. Most times, however, it’s a particle and many people don’t understand the difference.
This is also the source of the “rule” against split infinitives.
Since there are none in Latin, nor trailing prepositons, they tend not to appear in translations from Latin to English.
Translating the other way is harder when they are used, because you have to reunite the parts for Latin.
The Anglo-Saxon rules derived from basic Germanic, where these “problems” simply didn’t exist.
The dominance of the Normans made all split decisions like that shift toward the Romance Language traditions.
DAmmit, Joe Cool! I WAS gonna put the Beavis and Butthead thing!
LMAO
I thought that maybe you aren’t supposed to put prepositions at the end of sentences because in many cases it’s just a superfluous word:
Where’s the book at? = Where’s the book?
Where’d he go to? = Where’d he go?
What’d you do that for? = Why’d you do that?
Where’d you come from? = Whence did you come?
Well, maybe not the last one…Anyway, by far the most prevalent abuse is “Where’s…at?”, at least in the midwest, which is definitely a case of a useless word, and an ideal sentence is a concise one, I believe.
Hmmm, some of you claim that it’s rare for someone to actually end a sentence with a preposition. I’d have to disagree. I hear it all the time, and I notice it. I rarely make this “mistake” myself, and I’m always able to puzzle out an equivalent sentence that would put the preposition back where it belongs, when I hear someone else speak such a sentence. I’d have to say, though, that in the majority of the cases, the blunder occurs in an interrogatory sentence, e.g. “Who are you sending that letter to?” This could become “To whom are you sending that letter.” Yeah, it sounds stuffy, but I just can’t bring myself to say it the other way around. ( <-An example of a sentence ended with a “preposition” that is indeed not a preposition.) I don’t know why, but I have all these grammar rules conveniently located in the forefront of my mind, so I tend to speak more or less correctly. For God’s sake, I say “whom” in conversation.
I hear it all the time as well, and I despise it. I think the most common one I hear was noted above, “Where… at?” <screams>
Me too. I also use “whence” in conversation. Very rarely I use “whither” (the substitute for “Where are you going to?” is “Whither are you going?” or, if you wish to be incredibly stuffy and halfway Biblical, “Whither goest thou?”) and “hither.” These words (whence, hence, whither, hither) come from the ancient ablative and allative cases that we used to have and that Latin did have.
And “hence,” of course, has come to mean something slightly different; where once it meant “from here,” now it is used as a conjunction of all things, meaning “proceeding from here.”
Grammar lesson over.
LL