mellow weasel wrote:Hey, can you people teach me something? It's often said that it's unadvisable to end a sentence with a preposition. But how should you end it then? For example, just now elsewhere I wrote a sentence "Now this is a kind of character I can empathize with". How else can I say it with "with" not being in the end? Saying "Now I can empathize with this kind of character" doesn't have intended emphasis.
As I understand it, this grammar rule came from imposing Latin grammar rules on English. In Latin it would indeed make no sense to end a sentence with a preposition, but English is not Latin and it's not even a Romance (derived from Latin) language; it's Germanic. I think that in English a preposition is a perfectly good word to end a sentence with.
The rule about splitting infinitives is another rule from Latin. Actually, it's not even a rule in Latin; infinitives are single words (e.g.,
ire, "to go"), so it's impossible to split them. So some English grammarian decided that one should not split English infinitives. I don't have any objections to "To boldly go . . ." or any objection to using "Try your best to not drool" in the interest of getting the phrase to fit into the music, though if I were writing prose there's something about "Try your best not to drool" that sounds preferable.
Just my two cents' worth as a Latin teacher.
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. You just have to be familiar with what you criticize so you know what you're talking about, and if you're not familiar but really want to talk some trash - google it so you don't end up sounding like a fool.
it's why I do my research before I can criticize. After all you wouldn't want to look like a fool. 
. And then I'm all like "phew, good thing I didn't say anything" 
