Notebook: Up with Putting

by Ann Kjellberg, editor

Recently dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster puzzled me a bit by making waves with a pronouncement about English grammar in an Instagram post. Press coverage duly responded to this “new guidance” from Merriam-Webster, and the deluge of outrage and celebration in its replies, with earnest attention. Linguist John McWhorter on NPR deferred to the mood by joining in the applause (“of all of the blackboard grammar rules, that one has always been one of the most utterly ridiculous”), though he acknowledged that he wasn’t sure “why that happens to have been proclaimed right now.” What sort of announcement is this, I wondered? Does Merriam-Webster have some ongoing deliberation about which rules of grammar to chuck, sending out occasional updates on Instagram? A second (!) NPR story linked to undated Merriam-Webster guidance that the rule was abandoned by grammar and usage experts in the early twentieth century. Writing in the LA Times, style guide June Casagrande sited concurrence with Merriam-Webster’s newsmaking Instagram post by most of the usual authorities: Fowler, Strunk and White, Garner. (Fowler was particularly eloquent, saying that absence of this supposed rule is “a remarkable freedom enjoyed by English” and “an important element in the flexibility of the language.”) Yet folks took great pleasure in stomping robustly on the non-rule’s grave. The oft-defeated rule the news of whose life was greatly exaggerated was the prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition.