Welcome to the April 2025 chapter newsletter. 

CHAPTER NEWS

• Breaking Injera and Building Connections: AMWA Spring Social Recap

• Upcoming Book Club: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

• Membership Committee Chair Vacancy

• Call for Submissions

• Join our AMWA North Central LinkedIn Community 

FEATURE ARTICLES

• Grammar Talk: Preposition Stranding

JOB BOARD

• Announcements

CHAPTER NEWS

Upcoming Book Club: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

For our April book club, we will be reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022). This fiction bestseller tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a beloved cooking show host in 1960s Southern California after being fired as a chemist four years earlier. The book was made into a miniseries in 2023. We will meet at 7pm CT on Monday, April 28 at this link. We hope to see many of you there!

Membership Committee Chair Vacancy

The AMWA North Central Chapter is looking for a volunteer to fill the Membership Committee Chair position. The Membership Chair’s role is to update the membership list monthly to ensure the active members are on the email list and that expired memberships have been removed. If you would like to join us or have any questions regarding open roles, please reach out to bod@amwanorthcentral.org. 

Call for Submissions

To all Chapter members, we welcome your upcoming contributions. If you are interested in writing for the newsletter, please contact Dora Miedaner (dora.miedaner@gmail.com). Submissions are due at the beginning of the last week of each month and may require a round of editorial revision before being published.

FEATURE ARTICLES

Grammar Talk: Preposition Stranding 

By Tess Van Ee

What is preposition stranding? 

“Preposition stranding” occurs when writers end a sentence with a preposition (e.g., of, for).1 This sentence structure isolates the preposition at the end of a sentence, far away from the object it modifies. Here’s an example. 

“What are you reading about?”

In this sentence, “what” is the object of the preposition “about.” To un-strand the preposition and re-moor it to its object, the sentence could be rewritten as: 

“About what are you reading?” 

Preposition stranding is actually okay 

Imagine casually asking, “About what are you reading?” at a coffee shop. People would look at you like you belonged in the 1600s, which is not coincidentally when this “rule” was implemented.2 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the AMA Manual of Style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct. These sources recommend stranding a preposition over contorting a sentence to keep the preposition with its object.2,3 

Scholars trace preposition stranding to two 17th-century Englishmen. Grammarian Joshua Poole is credited with creating the rule, and writer John Dryden popularized it.4 Dryden was fluent in Latin and translated many of the classics, including Virgil’s Aeneid, into English. Scholars believe Dryden wanted English grammar to be more like Latin, where preposition stranding is incorrect. According to Dryden, preposition stranding was simply “not elegant.”5 

From its origins in the 17th century, the idea that preposition stranding is incorrect continues today. I remember learning in high school English to avoid ending sentences with a preposition, and the rule has been reiterated in grammar books and public debates throughout the years.4 One reason it continues to surface may be our obsession with writing and speaking correctly. According to grammarian Ellen Jovin, another reason why people still fight for this rule is the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve worked so hard to write around it that we don’t want to believe the work is for nothing.6

What preposition stranding reveals about grammar

Why talk about preposition stranding if it isn’t a problem? The tenacity of this “rule” is a warning to avoid supporting rules blindly. As English evolves, we may have to revisit rules to ensure they serve their intended purpose—making writing clearer and easier to read.

Grammar rules should not be about sounding “elegant” (quoting Dryden), because what sounds “elegant” is going to change. 

I love how long-time The New Yorker copyeditor Mary Norris explains the English language’s changing nature. In Confessions of a Comma Queen, Norris writes:  

“English has so many words of foreign origin, and words that look the same but mean something different depending on their context, and words that are in flux, opening and closing like flowers in time-lapse photography.”7  

Flowers look like they are standing still, but when you put a camera in front of them and hit record, you’ll catch the moment they unfurl to start gathering sunlight, and how they shift and turn throughout the day. The changes are hard to see in the moment, but they are happening—just like the English language. 

If you’re still against preposition stranding, don’t worry; that is okay. I also think it looks weird to end a sentence with “for.” But we must let others strand their prepositions as long as the stranded preposition doesn’t muddy the sentence's meaning. After all, grammar rules exist to make writing better, not to make writers feel better. That’s what friends are for. 

References

1. Caulfield J. Ending a sentence with a preposition: Examples & tips. Scibbr. Published April 13, 2023. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition/ 

2. Prepositions, ending a sentence with: Yes, you can end a sentence with a preposition. Merriam-Webster. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with

3. AMA Manual of Style. Rule 8.8.3.2. ending a sentence with a preposition.  

4. Yanez Bouza N.  Preposition stranding and prescriptivism in English from 1500 to 1900: A corpus-based approach. Doctoral Thesis. University of Manchester; 2007. 

5. Nosowitz D. Where the ‘No ending a sentence with a preposition’ rule comes from. Atlas Obscura. Published June 12, 2018. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-cant-you-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition 

6. Bowman E. Merriam-Webster says you can end a sentence with a preposition. The internet goes off. National Public Radio. Updated March 1, 2024. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1233663125/grammar-preposition-sentence-rule-myth-merriam-webster-dictionary

7. Norris M. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.  

Job Board

Announcements

Are you looking for work? You know someone who’s hiring? Please reach out! The job board will be updated in every issue of the monthly newsletter. If you’d like to add your name to this list, please contact Dora Miedaner (dora.miedaner@gmail.com).