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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!proper!gam
From: gam@proper.UUCP (Gordon Moffett)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: For what is grammar good?
Message-ID: <1081@proper.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Mar-84 01:58:22 EST
Article-I.D.: proper.1081
Posted: Thu Mar 29 01:58:22 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Mar-84 08:20:18 EST
Organization: Proper UNIX, Oakland, CA
Lines: 18
Keywords: grammar,prepositions,English

@
In an article in Unix(tm) Review (incidentally cited in net.women...)
we find:
	"For what is WWB [writers workbench] good?"

Why this laborious turn of phrase to avoid the apparently dreaded
preposition at the end of a sentence?  It sounds awful.  The question
stands out as a decidedly unusual usage, and the reader (me, anyway)
is so distracted by it that I lose the flow of the following paragraph.

I submit that this attempt at improved grammar has in fact failed
to convey meaning without drawing attention to usage, and this,
I conclude, is poor writing style.  The rule of avoiding ending
sentences with prepositions, at least in this case, interferes
with effective communication.  (Or, put another way, the rules of
grammar have shifted to make this usage archaic).

Discussion is encouraged.