It’s not that the sentence ends in a preposition. It’s that it is just bad English. Not quite as bad as using that sentence with the incorrect verb conjugation, e.g. Where you be at?
Ending a sentence with a preposition is not always a bad thing, particularly if the alternative results in awkward syntax. Example: That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put.
We had a recent multigenerational family gathering with the oldsters trying to guess millennial slang. They hated a lot of it. Especially " dead" to mean “I think that’s hilarious”. But they loved " ghosting "
Most slang moves on quickly. Longer enduring than some is Bae which when they understood what it meant most older people acknowledged that it encapsulated a concept that there was no other perfect equivalent for.
My great aunt loved that asking someone if they wanted to come over and " Netflix and chill" means the same as asking them if they wanted to come up and see your etchings in her day.
People who use “infer” when they mean “imply” make me a little crazy. People who think the only first-person pronoun that can follow “and” is “I” (“That’s good news for your father and I”) make me cringe. And I don’t know when the word “default” came to be pronounced “DEE-fault,” but even journalists on NPR do it.
My D came home from her first semester of college and informed me that there are prescriptive linguists and descriptive linguists — the latter don’t view any language usage as incorrect, but would consider it to be evolution of usage instead. This didn’t change my opinion
“That’s good news for your father and me” always sounds a bit odd to me, so I tend to write it as “me and your father” instead (which still sounds odd, just less so). The first, while technically correct, seems to go against the common (incorrect) parlance of “your father and I”. I guess the misuse has gotten so widespread that I now feel like people would look at me like I was wrong for using the correct construction.
Which I guess is worth a whole 'nother thread (see what I did there?). Things we say that we know are incorrect but say anyway because it’s now the common parlance.
My biggest pet peeve is when someone edits my work and makes incorrect corrections, ha. Or even worse, when someone edits my material incorrectly and then sends it out to other people! That happened just recently. Grr.
My last supervisor was a real prima donna (or pre-madonna - ha!) who did NOT know the difference between lose and loose…which is a real problem when your area of expertise is health and workplace wellness. I was editing something for him once where I had to change every “benefits of loosing weight” to “benefits of losing weight.”
Of course, he dressed me down – in front of others at a group meeting – because I “incorrectly” edited his work. He couldn’t possibly be in error because he graduated from Stanford and got his doctorate from Harvard.
Fortunately the memos I used to edit were written by engineers, who were somewhere between oblivious and happy to have the help. One of my old colleagues used to call me “the English major”, which he meant as a compliment - he didn’t hesitate to trust me with the technical work as well and helped my career in many ways.
My biggest pet peeve is when someone edits my work and makes incorrect corrections, ha.
My son detested peer review in both high school and college for this reason. He would bring the reviews to me to make sure he was correct in ignoring comments … and yes, he was. Every time.
Long post - I’ve been following online forums too frequently this week.
I do believe language is and should be fluid and flexible, evolving with every generation as it is influenced by vernacular, other global languages, non-native speakers and many other things. I just feel unable to keep up with the current pace of change or even accept some of the changes. The rules that I grew up learning don’t seem to be followed anymore. My kids consider me an anachronism when I talk about the rules my English teachers had drilled into my head.
I tend to be a purist and when I see a typo or a mistake in anything I’ve written, I am mortified(this happens more often than I like because my fingers rebel and refuse to follow my brain’s commands). Anything that is likely to stick around longer than you are should stand the test of time for quality — that’s what my favorite teacher always said.
A sampling of the outdated, quaint, things I was taught that few people even remember or care about anymore (in fact I hardly follow these anymore because they’ve receded into a gray area of my brain):
Tomatos have no ‘toes’ but potatoes do(or vice versa because who really remembers this rule). Most of the people I know fall into the ‘toed’ group and the few who don’t, outweigh the use of fewer characters over accuracy.
Practise is the verb form of practice a la advise/advice.
Envelop is the verb form not envelope.
Don’t say that when referring to a person.
Instead of saying I and my sister, do say my sister and I.
As for making any headway in correcting the much abused use of I, me and my, or in the who/whom debate, that appears to be a lost cause! My kids friends’ say ‘I’s’ house, ‘my’s’ house, me and her instead of my house or she and I. And my kids often slip up while conversing with them.
But really, who cares? Not my kids and certainly no one else… I’m just this cranky old grammar n*** who is being pretentious when I point out the errors.
If you read through this rant, thank you. I really am done after this. I had to vent after reading for the nth time on my school fb boards about ‘a ‘perspective’ student who is a shoe-in’.
I think the younger members of your family need to have their hearing checked.
The “pre-madonna” thing reminded me of how many times I’ve seen young people spell ludicrous as “ludacris.” Perhaps this will stop happening as Ludacris is eclipsed by newer performers.
“My biggest pet peeve is when someone edits my work and makes incorrect corrections, ha”
Not a work-related, but a few years back I was corrected by a caller when I gave the response, “This is she” when asked “Is Belle315 there?”. The caller responded, “You mean ‘This is her?’” The caller then got a mini-grammar lesson she hadn’t expected.
I never feel guilty about using proper grammar, even if I am the only one. I teach my kids that proper grammar is a sign of a great education.