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Subject:churchill ::sigh:: From:"rshade -at- fast -dot- net" <rshade -at- fast -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:14:58 -0400
-----Original Message from "David Neely"
>
> I'm reminded of the famous anecdote about Winston
> Churchill: "The alt.english.usage FAQ states that the
> story originated with an anecdote in Sir Ernest
Gowers=e2?=99
> Plain Words (1948). Supposedly an editor had clumsily
> rearranged one of Churchill=e2?=99s sentences to avoid
ending
> it in a preposition...The FAQ goes on to say that the
> Oxford Companion to the English Language (no edition
> cited) states that the original was =e2?=9cThis is the
sort of
> bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.=e2?=9d
>http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html
This whole Churchill thing is so screwed up. In the first
place "put up with" is being used as a verb (substitute
"endure")
If you reword the sentence .. "This is the sort of..
nonsense I will not put up with", you can clearly see that
"with" is NOT being used as a preposition.
Churchill's editor was wrong to rearrange the sentence as
indicated, and we are wrong for thinking that the faux pas
eliminates the requirement that objects should follow the
preposition. --- the rule to not end a sentence with a
preposition is to make sure that writers attach the object
to the preposition.
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