Currents
October 2016
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Mrs. E would certainly be horrified because in
that last sentence, I ignored Rule Number Twonever end a sentence with a preposition. Had I written that offensive construction in tenth grade English
class, she would have crossed out the offending final
preposition with her big red pencil. Her correction
would have read “the horses for which she was looking.”
Rule Number Three was never use the word get,
which, as Mrs. E remarked, was a lazy verb for lazy
people. Unless we wanted to see red X's on our
papers, we avoided expressions like get angry, get
promoted, get together and get along and even
innocuous ones like get up, get down, get out or get
in.
Looking back at my tenth grade experiences, I
appreciate Mrs. E's mission to teach her students
how to use English correctly. I only wish she had
told us that the rules of grammar are not written in
stone.
If I could contact Mrs. E today, I would remind
her that language changes as society changes. In
the 21st century, the foundations
of her three “Never' rules are
crumbling. Today hey is an informal replacement for hi, especially
among millennials.
English speakers - even the
most educated - no longer worry
about ending a sentence with a
preposition. What counts most is
sounding natural.
“She has
nobody to turn to” is clearly the
winner over “To nobody she has
to turn.”
The outcast verb get has
gained some respectability in the
vocabulary family. In limited
doses, it's OK to use get. Many
expressions with this verb are,
however, only for informal situations.
In conclusion, here is what I
would like to tell my tenth grade
English teacher.
We Support Our Troops
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