You can end a sentence with a preposition. "Who was the letter addressed to?" and "the book I told you about" are ordinary English, and every dictionary and style guide quoted below agrees that no rule forbids them. The ban most people half remember goes back to one critic's remark in 1672, hardened into a school rule, and never matched how English is written.
EdCitation publishes this guide, built from Dryden's essay in a digitised scholarly edition, a doctoral study of the rule's history, Lowth's 1762 grammar, two fact-checks of the Churchill story and the dictionaries' own pages, all read on 26 September 2026. Where something could not be confirmed, we say so.
For an essay, the question that matters is what your course's style guide says. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads a brief or style sheet into a checklist, each rule beside the sentence it came from.
What counts as ending a sentence with a preposition?
A sentence "ends with a preposition" when the preposition has been parted from the noun phrase it belongs with and left at the end of its clause. Linguists call this stranding; moving the preposition forward with its partner ("to whom") is pied piping. Those are the two orders Yáñez-Bouza (2014) compares across English writing from 1500 to 1900.
Stranded prepositions
The real issue, as the grammar notes that accompany A Student's Introduction to English Grammar point out, is a preposition separated from its object, which can happen mid-sentence too (Huddleston et al., n.d.). Stranding is normal in questions, relative clauses, passives and infinitives.
| Construction | Stranded, the normal order | Fronted, the formal order | Can it be fronted? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question | Which archive did you work in? | In which archive did you work? | Yes, but it sounds stiff |
| Relative clause | the theory she relies on | the theory on which she relies | Yes; common in formal prose |
| Relative with that | the town that I come from | (none: from that is not English) | No |
| Passive | The question has been written about for decades. | (none) | No |
| Infinitive | a method worth arguing for | (none that reads naturally) | Rarely |
| Phrasal verb | the results we set out | (none: out is not a preposition here) | No |
Where fronting works, you may choose; where it does not, forcing it produces phrases such as "impossible with which to comply", one of the examples Huddleston et al. (n.d.) collect.
Phrasal verbs and particles
Many final words that look like prepositions are not. The American Heritage Dictionary's usage note gives "I don't know where she will end up" and "the most curious book I've ever run across": up and across are particles, and the proof is that they cannot move in front of anything, so even strict followers of the old rule have no grounds to object (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.). Lowth (1762) made a similar point, noting that cast up an account means something other than cast, and treating such prepositions as part of the verb. "Give up", "carry out" and "put up with" work the same way.
Where did the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition come from?
The usual answer is John Dryden, and his words survive.
Dryden on Ben Jonson, 1672
When Dryden published The Conquest of Granada in 1672, he added at the end of the volume a prose "Defence of the Epilogue", arguing that the playwrights of the previous age wrote less correctly than his own (Ker, 1900). He says he opened Jonson's Catiline by chance and found faults in its last pages, among them the line "The bodies that those souls were frighted from". His verdict: the preposition at the end is "a common fault with him", and one he had only lately noticed in his own writing (Dryden, 1672/1900).
He gives no reason. His next complaint, about a line ending "could not reach unto", is a different one: unto is last and also redundant. Huddleston et al. (n.d.) conclude that the objection seems to have been simply Dryden's whim.
Dryden corrects himself, 1684
Dryden took his own advice. W. P. Ker, whose 1900 Clarendon Press edition is the one we read, records that when Dryden revised his Essay of Dramatic Poesy for the 1684 edition he changed "the age I live in" to "the age in which I live", among other "grammatical amendments" (Ker, 1900). Ker printed the 1668 text instead, as the truer record of how Dryden wrote.
Before and after Dryden
Yáñez-Bouza (2007), in a Manchester doctoral thesis comparing grammar books' rules with actual usage, argues that the proscription began not with the late eighteenth-century grammars, as had been assumed, but in the mid to late seventeenth century, with the grammarian Joshua Poole as well as Dryden. We read the thesis's published abstract, not Poole's own book, so his words are not quoted here.
Lowth's 1762 grammar is often blamed, but his words are mild. He calls the stranded order "an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to", at home in conversation and familiar writing, and says only that the fronted order is "more graceful" and suits the solemn style (Lowth, 1762).
The rule changed usage only for a while: Yáñez-Bouza (2007) found that late eighteenth-century precepts reduced stranding into the early nineteenth century, then the trend reversed as prescriptivism faded; the grammars, she argues, reinforced an existing trend rather than starting one.
Why did anyone think Latin mattered?
Because the word preposition describes Latin grammar. It comes from Latin praepositio, from praeponere, "to put in front" (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-a), and Lowth (1762) explains the name the same way: prepositions are commonly put before the words they govern.
The step from "commonly" to "always" is what the authorities now reject. The American Heritage note says Dryden probably relied on "a specious analogy to Latin" (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.). Emily Brewster, an associate editor, says in Merriam-Webster's video on the subject that Dryden most likely objected because Latin does not allow the construction, when making English more like Latin was fashionable (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b). The linguistic fact is simple: Latin, Spanish and Italian do not strand prepositions, while English, Icelandic and Norwegian do, and English has for a thousand years (Huddleston et al., n.d.).
Where the accounts differ
Grammarphobia, run by Patricia O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman, blames eighteenth-century Latinists and says the rule was mostly passed on orally, since it is absent from almost all the old grammar books they own (O'Conner & Kellerman, 2010). Yáñez-Bouza dates it a century earlier and finds eighteenth-century grammars discussing it. Neither account finds a grammatical reason behind it.
Did Churchill really say "up with which I will not put"?
No reliable evidence shows that he did. The joke circulated before anyone linked it to him.
Quote Investigator (2012) found it first in The West Sussex Gazette of 31 July 1941, about an unnamed schoolmaster called up into the army who, scolded by a superior for a final preposition, called the correction "a thing up with which I will not put". The Strand Magazine set it in a government department in May 1942, still unnamed. Churchill's initials were first attached in a Nottingham newspaper in October 1943, and the familiar version, with a Foreign Office pedant correcting his speech, had settled by 1946.
Zimmer (2004), on the linguists' blog Language Log, notes that Churchill often wrote for The Strand, which would hardly have left him unnamed, and that the usual source, Ernest Gowers's Plain Words of 1948, introduces the story with "It is said that". Merriam-Webster's video calls it an "unconfirmed legend" (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b), and the American Heritage note says the attribution is "probably" false (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.). Use it as a joke about the rule, not as his words.
What do dictionaries and style guides say today?
They agree that a final preposition is not an error; the fronted order is a matter of register, not correctness.
| Authority | What it says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Merriam-Webster | Nothing wrong with it; the objection was born in the 17th century and largely dropped by usage experts in the early 20th | Merriam-Webster (n.d.-a) |
| American Heritage Dictionary | English allows and sometimes requires a final preposition; rewrites can turn stilted or comical | HarperCollins Publishers (n.d.) |
| Chicago Manual of Style | The prohibition is "a grammar superstition", in no authoritative grammar (CMOS 5.186) | University of Chicago Press (n.d.) |
| MLA Style Center | A choice, not an error; write what sounds natural rather than strained | Doose (2020) |
| APA Style | No page on it; its grammar pages send writers to a trusted grammar reference | American Psychological Association (2024) |
| Your course | Whatever its style sheet says, if anything | EdCitation's Check your paper |
Chicago's dating of its own position, back to its first edition of 1906, is covered in our guide to who decides what is correct English, and Dryden's wider part in the language's story is in our short history of the language.
Should you end a sentence with a preposition in academic writing?
Yes, when it gives the clearer sentence. Academic prose leans formal, so "the framework on which the study rests" is common; "the framework the study rests on" is equally correct in every major style.
- Find the style your course names. Paste the brief or style sheet into EdCitation's free Check your paper, and read the set-aside sentences too.
- Follow that guide, not a half-remembered rule. APA, MLA and Chicago all allow the final preposition.
- Try both orders. Where fronting reads naturally, pick what fits the paragraph; with that clauses, passives and phrasal verbs, leave the preposition where it is.
- Cut a preposition that does no work. "The archive in which the letters were found in" says in twice; redundancy was Dryden's second complaint, and a fair one.
- Reference any dictionary or usage guide you quote. Give its DOI, ISBN or address to EdCitation's Cite a source and check the entry it returns.
On register more widely, see academic tone, the first person and the passive voice.
A real style sheet, run through Check your paper
We pasted the "pet peeves" style sheet of an MIT graduate seminar in comparative politics, published on MIT OpenCourseWare, into Check your paper (Lawson, 2024). It says nothing about prepositions.
It returned two rules, each with its sentence: page numbers, from "Always include page numbers on your papers."; and a reference list, from the line asking that the bibliography follow one of the appropriate styles. It set 28 sentences aside, among them "Avoid contractions in formal writing." and "Do not worry about split infinitives." Judging a paper against rules like those is Theoretics QA's work.
Three sentences appeared in neither list: the advice to consult Strunk and White's Elements of Style when in doubt, the instruction to pick one citation style and keep to it, and the reminder to spellcheck. Read the brief alongside the checklist. As for the recommended book, Huddleston et al. (n.d.) say Strunk's 1918 original said nothing against stranding and that E. B. White's added chapter preferred the stranded order in his example; we did not read it.
How does EdCitation help with a question of usage?
EdCitation is the best place to settle a usage question for a paper, because the answer that counts is your course's, and it reads that from your own brief, every rule beside its sentence, as the run above shows. It looks each reference up in the publisher's record rather than composing it, something no chatbot can guarantee, and it never writes or rephrases a word of your paper.
- Check your paper, free, no account: how long each part may be, which headings are required, how many sources and how recent, which citation style, and font, spacing and margins. Having the paper itself judged against those rules takes Theoretics QA, in the Max plan at $24 a month.
- Find sources, free: about 300 million published works, searched by subject or by the claim you want to support. The claim "eighteenth-century grammarians condemned preposition stranding" returned 744,543 results, led by Yáñez-Bouza's 2008 chapter "Preposition stranding in the eighteenth century: Something to talk about". A claim naming Dryden did worse, led by an unsigned 1863 Notes and Queries note; word a claim as an abstract would.
- Cite a source, free: six styles (APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, Chicago 18 author-date, IEEE, Vancouver) from a DOI, a title, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a web address, with a retraction check on each source.
- Mechanics QA, Pro at $8 a month (pricing), reads the whole file: layout against the APA 7 student paper, leftover comments and tracked changes, citations matched to the list, figures, and language errors a spell-checker lets pass.
Three Cite a source runs, and what to correct
From the address of the American Heritage entry, Cite a source returned, in APA 7:
HarperCollins Publishers. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary entry: Preposition. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=preposition
The publisher is right as author; the title is the page's own, so give the headword and the dictionary as our reference list does, in the editable page details before the entry is built.
From the DOI of Yáñez-Bouza's book it returned Crossref's record, dated 2014, with the title set in the sentence case APA wants; a published review dates the print book 2015, so check your copy. Ker's edition, from the address of its archived scan, came back as a web page titled "Essays of John Dryden: Dryden, John, 1631-1700", with no author or year: cite the book instead, as our list does. Merriam-Webster's page could not be read at all, and the tool reported that instead of inventing details. Finally, run the whole list through the free Verify references.
Quick questions
Is it grammatically wrong to end a sentence with a preposition?
No. Merriam-Webster, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Chicago Manual of Style all accept it, and with passives and that clauses it is the only grammatical order.
Who invented the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition?
John Dryden is usually credited, for faulting Ben Jonson's "frighted from" in 1672; Yáñez-Bouza's research also names the grammarian Joshua Poole.
Did Winston Churchill say "up with which I will not put"?
There is no reliable evidence that he did. The joke appeared in 1941 about an unnamed schoolmaster, and Churchill's name was attached from 1943.
Are phrasal verbs at the end of a sentence a problem?
No. In "I don't know where she will end up", up is a particle belonging to the verb, not a preposition.
Does my university want me to avoid a final preposition?
Only if its style sheet says so; APA, MLA and Chicago do not. Paste the brief into EdCitation's free Check your paper and look for a language rule in both the checklist and the set-aside sentences.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2024). Grammar. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar
- Doose, S. (2020, February 25). To dangle or not to dangle: On ending a sentence with a preposition. MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/preposition-at-end-of-sentence/
- Dryden, J. (1900). Defence of the epilogue; or, an essay on the dramatic poetry of the last age. In W. P. Ker (Ed.), Essays of John Dryden (Vol. 1, pp. 162–177). Clarendon Press. (Original work published 1672) https://archive.org/details/essaysofjohndryd01dryduoft
- HarperCollins Publishers. (n.d.). Preposition. In The American Heritage dictionary of the English language (5th ed.). Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=preposition
- Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. K., & Reynolds, B. (n.d.). Stranded prepositions. A Student's Introduction to English Grammar: Prescriptive grammar notes. https://pullum.ppls.ed.ac.uk/SIEG/prepstranding.html
- Ker, W. P. (Ed.). (1900). Essays of John Dryden (Vol. 1). Clarendon Press. https://archive.org/details/essaysofjohndryd01dryduoft
- Lawson, C. (2024). Appendix II: Stylistic and substantive hints for writing papers (a.k.a., pet peeves). 17.588 Field Seminar in Comparative Politics, MIT OpenCourseWare. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/17-588-field-seminar-in-comparative-politics-spring-2024/pages/appendix-ii-stylist-and-substantive-hints-for-writing-papers-aka-pet-peeves/
- Lowth, R. (1762). A short introduction to English grammar: With critical notes. J. Hughs. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72554
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Preposition. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/preposition
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Ending a sentence with a preposition [Video]. https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition
- O'Conner, P. T., & Kellerman, S. (2010, October 29). Myth information. Grammarphobia. https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/10/myth-information.html
- Quote Investigator. (2012, July 4). This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Prepositions (Q&A No. 3). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Prepositions/faq0003.html
- Yáñez-Bouza, N. (2007). Preposition stranding and prescriptivism in English from 1500 to 1900: A corpus-based approach [Doctoral thesis, University of Manchester]. https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publications/preposition-stranding-and-prescriptivism-in-english-from-1500-to-/
- Yáñez-Bouza, N. (2014). Grammar, rhetoric and usage in English: Preposition placement 1500–1900. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511732522
- Zimmer, B. (2004, December 12). A misattribution no longer to be put up with. Language Log. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/001715.html