The Broken Rules Page

Never end a sentence with a preposition.

According to Bill Bryson [The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way [c.US$10]], "The source of this stricture... was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad." And further, that "...even he was not didactic about it. He recognized that ending a sentence with a preposition was idiomatic and common in both speech and informal writing. He suggested only that he thought it generally better and more graceful, not crucial, to place the preposition before its relative "in solemn and elevated" writing.".

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In an effort to coerce his young son to bed, a dedicated father told the boy to go upstairs, to his bedroom, promising him to follow shortly with a book. The father would then read to his son in bed. When his father arrived, with his sons least favorite book, one about Australia, the boy said: "What did you bring that book, that i don't want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?". This held the Guiness Book record until the category was dropped, purportedly because you can add prepositions to the end of this sentence indefinitely, as follows: "What did you say that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?' for? The preceding sentence has one more."¹

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Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill's sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition. Churchill scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant nonsense" substituted for "English", or with other variations. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations [c.US$28] cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain Words_ (1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that Churchill..."; so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, Churchill's words were "bloody nonsense" and the variants are euphemisms.)

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"Excuse me, where is the library at?"
"Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
"O.K. Excuse me, where is the library at, asshole?"

"i" before "e" except after "c", except when said "ay" as in "neighbor" and "weigh".

This is in no way authoritative. I just threw it together; please mail me any corrections. Keep in mind that English, more than any other language, has borrowed and indeed continues to borrow extensively from other languages. Many words here could be considered to be transitional in this sense. As pointed out by [email protected], "Keith" breaks the rule, but is not listed here. This is because the list (allwords.txt) from which I created this list does not contain proper nouns. I'd like to include proper nouns, but not piecemeal. If you know of a large digital source of proper nouns, please let me know.
-ojo

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Section 1: EI's that break the rule:
I've excluded ...eism, ...eist, ..eing, ...eish, and re-i... forms. Listed here are 409 of the 1010 english words containing "ei" from a large list of english words. That is, more than a third of the english words containing "ei" break the rule.
agapeic, albeit, alzheimer, anaheim, apartheid, apneic, apogeic, braunschweiger, caducei, caffein, caffeine, caffeines, caffeinic, caffeins, casein, caseins, choreic, codein, codeine, codeines, codeins, coheir, coheirs, counterfeit, counterfeited, counterfeiter, counterfeiters, counterfeiting, counterfeitly, counterfeitness, counterfeits, cruzeiro, cruzeiros, cuneiform, decaffeinate, decaffeinated, decaffeinates, decaffeinating, dei, deice, deiced, deicer, deicers, deices, deicidal, deicide, deicides, deicing, deific, deifical, deification, deifications, deified, deifier, deifiers, deifies, deiform, deify, deifying, deionization, deionizations, deionize, deionized, deionizes, deionizing, deoxyribonucleic, desoxyribonucleic, diarrhoeic, edelweiss, edelweisses, eider, eiderdown, eiders, eidetic, eidola, eidolon, eidolons, eidos, eiffel, eikon, einstein, einsteinium, eire, eisenhower, eisteddfod, eisteddfods, eisteddfodau, either, fahrenheit, feinschmecker, feinschmeckers, feist, feistier, feistiest, feists, feisty, foreign, foreigner, foreigners, foreignness, forfeit, forfeitable, forfeitableness, forfeited, forfeiting, forfeits, forfeiture, forfeitures, frankenstein, frankensteins, fraulein, frauleins, geiger, geisha, geishas, gemutlichkeit, gesundheit, glutei, gneiss, gneisses, gneissic, heifer, heifers, heigh, height, heighten, heightened, heightening, heightens, heighth, heighths, heights, heil, heiled, heiling, heils, heinie, heinies, heir, heirdom, heirdoms, heired, heiress, heiresses, heiring, heirless, heirloom, heirlooms, heirs, heirship, heirships, heist, heisted, heister, heisters, heisting, heists, herein, hereinafter, hereinto, heterogeneity, holstein, holsteins, homogeneity, howbeit, hygeist, hygieists, ileitis, inhomogeneities, inveigle, inveigled, inveiglement, inveigler, inveiglers, inveigles, inveigling, jadeite, jadeites, janeiro, kaleidoscope, kaleidoscopes, kaleidoscopic, kaleidoscopically, keister, keisters, kinaestheic, kleig, lactoprotein, leipzig, leister, leisure, leisured, leisureless, leisurely, leisures, leitmotif, leitmotifs, liechtenstein, lipoprotein, madeira, madeiras, mallei, marbleization, marbleize, marbleized, marbleizes, marbleizing, marseillaise, marseille, marseilles, meioses, meiosis, meiotic, monseigneur, mullein, mulleins, neither, nereid, nereides, nereids, nereis, nisei, niseis, nonforfeitable, nonforfeiture, nonforfeitures, nuclei, nucleic, nuclein, nucleoprotein, obeisance, obeisances, obeisant, oneida, oneidas, onomatopoeia, onomatopoeic, onomatopoeically, osteitic, osteitis, peignoir, peignoirs, peins, peiping, pharmacopeia, pharmacopeias, pharmacopoeia, pharmacopoeias, phenolphthalein, plebeian, plebeians, pleiades, pleistocene, poltergeist, poltergeists, poseidon, preinaugural, preindustrial, preinsert, preinserted, preinserting, preinserts, preinstruct, preinstructed, preinstructing, preinstruction, preinstructs, preintimation, protein, proteinaceous, proteins, reich, reified, reifier, reifiers, reifies, reify, reifying, reinter, reinters, reivers, reiving, reveille, reveilles, ribonucleic, seborrhoeic, seidlitz, seige, seigneur, seigneurage, seigneurs, seignior, seigniorage, seigniorial, seigniors, seignorage, seignories, seignory, seine, seined, seiner, seiners, seines, seining, seism, seismal, seismic, seismically, seismicity, seismism, seismisms, seismogram, seismograms, seismograph, seismographer, seismographers, seismographic, seismographs, seismography, seismological, seismologist, seismologists, seismology, seismometer, seismometers, seismometric, seisms, seisure, seizable, seize, seized, seizer, seizers, seizes, seizing, seizings, seizins, seizor, seizors, seizure, seizures, sheik, sheikdom, sheikdoms, sheikh, sheikhs, sheiks, sheila, simultaneity, sobeit, sovereign, sovereignly, sovereigns, sovereignties, sovereignty, speiled, spontaneity, stein, steins, subnuclei, surfeit, surfeited, surfeiting, surfeits, surveil, surveillance, surveillant, surveils, their, theirs, therein, thereinafter, tracheids, unveil, unveiled, unveiling, unveils, ureic, veil, veiled, veiledly, veiler, veilers, veiling, veilings, veils, vermeil, villein, villeinage, weiner, weiners, weir, weird, weirder, weirdest, weirdie, weirdies, weirdly, weirdness, weirdo, weirdoes, weirdos, weirds, weirdy, weirs, wherein, whereinsoever, zeins, zeiss, zeitgeist

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Section 2: IE's that break the rule:
I've excluded ...cy plurals, comparatives, and tenses. Listed here are 102 of 6317 words containing "ie" from a large list of english words. Fewer than 1 in 60 english words containing "ie" break the rule.
abortifacient, ancien, anciens, ancient, ancienter, ancientest, anciently, ancientness, ancients, bioscience, biosciences, bioscientist, boccie, calefacient, coefficient, coefficients, cogencies, concierge, concierges, conscience, conscienceless, consciences, conscientious, conscientiously, conscientiousness, curacies, deficiencies, deficiency, deficient, deficiently, delirifacient, efficiencies, efficiency, efficient, efficiently, facie, facies, faience, faiences, farcies, financier, financiers, gaieties, gaiety, geoscientist, geoscientists, glacier, glaciered, glaciers, hacienda, haciendas, inefficiencies, inefficiency, inefficient, inefficiently, insufficiencies, insufficiency, insufficient, insufficiently, intersocietal, liquefacient, nascencies, nescient, nescients, neuroscience, nonscientific, objicient, omniscience, omniscient, omnisciently, overconscientious, prescience, prescient, prescientific, proficiency, proficient, proficiently, pseudoscientific, pseudoscientifically, science, sciences, scientific, scientifically, scientist, scientistic, scientists, societal, societies, society, specie, species, stupefacient, subspecies, sufficiencies, sufficiency, sufficient, sufficiently, testacies, unconscientious, unconscientiously, unscientific, unscientifically

¹ A portion of this is from the alt.usage.english (HyperText) FAQ