Things we should do away with

Your college linguistic professor is wrong.

As Buck adroitly points out, there's always a better way to write the sentence. You can't "outdate" the need for prepositions to have objects. That's silly.

 

Has anyone said sock puppets yet?

 

English (either American or the Queen's) does borrow words from nearly every other language, but its root and basic syntax is Germanic.
The misconception about prepositions comes from boarding school teachers 200 years ago seeing that rule in Latin, French, Italian and every other western European language and brought the rule over to English, not understanding that the rule did not apply in that case.

 

No. I think you should say it five or six more times.

 

People who use the word literally incorrectly. I literally want to punch them all.

 

Don't let Joe Biden's Secret Service detail hear that.

 

You just like the word "dangling"

 

No, the logic comes from all prepositions needing objects. And normal Latinate construction puts the verb at the end of the sentence, so I'm not sure why they'd even need a rule about prepositions ending sentences.

 

What if they pronounce it in a funny way?

 

Hmmm. Anonymous message board poster. College professor whose entire life is devoted to the study of language. Can't imagine whose opinion holds more weight.

 

- Credit checks to rent

- Checks ... period

- The keep the tags on ballcap fad

- Athlete Twitter feeds

 

I find them kind of cute. If they make people feel important, flail away.

It's been years since I've seen someone looking at a newspaper in my newsroom.