![]() "Is he not a Novice," Fox wrote, "and Unmannerly, and an Ideot, and a Fool, that speaks You to one, which is not to be spoken to a singular, but to many?" The rest of us have pretty much moved on. George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, was so upset that people were using you (instead of thou) to address a single person that in 1660 he wrote an entire book about it. When one looks back over the glorious and bloodstained history of grammar and usage wars, it quickly becomes apparent that many of the things which got our ancestors in a swivet no longer bother us very much. ![]() Nonetheless, the idea that it is a rule is still held by many. It seems that the idea that this should be avoided originated with writers Joshua Poole and John Dryden, who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong. ![]() Ending a sentence with a preposition (such as with, of, and to) is permissible in the English language.
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