20/20 hindsight

[jedusor]

Today, after work, I walked from PVCC to the Taco Bell by Cosco, bought myself lunch, walked back to the MAX stop on Linwood and Main, waited for about forty minutes, rode to 59th, and walked home from there.

This is not an unusual afternoon ritual for me (although I don't go to Taco Bell often). However, as I approached my house, it began to snow, and I wondered if perhaps today mightn't have been the best day to wear shorts and a T-shirt.

Quick question:
We will never know of what he might have been capable.
We will never know what he might have been capable of.

Which is right? The first one seems more grammatically correct, but the second seems like it flows better.

Comments

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

numbah two, i think it has something to do with splitting an infinitive, and i'm going to bed now. congrats on two great essays... hope they agree with me! love, mom

[mh75.livejournal.com]

The first one is definitely correct.
The second ends a sentence in a preposition (i think, but now i'm wondering if your mom isn't right, because 'of' and 'what' definitely need to go together). But my Strunk&White is upstairs, and i'm lazy.

Anyway, it sounds weird because most American's don't use this particular part of our grammar correctly, so you'd be more likely to hear the second one. The first one will sounds more natural when you start consistently fixing this problem in your writing.

One way to address the issue would be to rephrase the sentence entirely. 'We will never know the breadth of his capability.', 'We will never know the full extent of his capabilities.'

[mh75.livejournal.com]

heh, i found at least one web site that claims that neither split infinitives, nor prepositions at the end of the sentence, are wrong.

Anyway, infinitives are things like, to be.
Splitting the infinitive would be something like, 'i hate to vehemently be vegetarian.' It is more correcty to say 'i hate to be vehemently vegetarian.'

So, i think sentence number two is incorrect because it ends in a preposition. The REASON this is wrong is that prepositions modify nouns or pronouns, and, as suchs, should come immediately before the word they are modifying.

I used to know this stuff without having to look it up. Thanks for the useful exercise.

Go with the second sentence.

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

On the whole, it's a good idea to avoid putting prepositions at the end of sentences. But (like the Pirate Code) it's more what you'd call a "guideline" than an actual "rule".

The story goes that an officious speechwriter once corrected Winston Churchill's draft of a speech--Churchill had ended a sentence with a preposition, and the speechwriter "fixed" it.

Churchill changed it back to the original (with the preposition at the end) and added the note in the margin, "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

Re: Go with the second sentence.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Yep!

As I understand it, this is one of those rules which does nothing to help comprehension but was added because a bunch of prescriptivists thought English should be more like Latin (http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Preposition). Let 'em go back to Rome, I say.

And of course, there's always "We will never know what he might have been capable of, asshole."

Re: Go with the second sentence.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

um. And now it occurs to me why you want to know. And I'm sorry for joking. :(

Re: Go with the second sentence.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it.

Re: Go with the second sentence.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Churchill changed it back to the original (with the preposition at the end) and added the note in the margin, "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

That amuses me highly.

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer the second (see notes from others about people trying to make English act like Latin; I know, vaguely, some experts in the field who assert vehemently that there is no such thing as a split infinitive); the first tastes wrong to me. If you were going to use it, I'd prefer "we will never know that of which he might have been capable", but it sounds slightly contrived nonetheless.

Have grammargasm pimped at you, btw.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

(see notes from others about people trying to make English act like Latin; I know, vaguely, some experts in the field who assert vehemently that there is no such thing as a split infinitive);

I thought that last bit of punctuation was an emoticon, and spent about eight seconds trying to figure out what expression it was.

I am so lame.

[imagines.livejournal.com]

1. The first is grammtically correct.

2. The second sounds better.

3. Fuck grammar when it sounds better to break the rules.

/English in Three Simple Rules