Preposition

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A preposition is a word, like with or to or of, with which one should not end of a sentence — if you’re speaking Latin. Since (if you’re smart) you’re not, you may put your preposition wherever you damn well please. Like the pendant’s aversion to split infinitives, this is a bogus grammatical rule to boldly be dismissive of.

Prepositions do the important but prosaic job of putting nouns and pronouns in relation to each other — “the cat sat on the mat” — so you have your work cut out if you want to put one at the end a sentence. But by all means try to.

Whether or not they end sentences with them, lawyers can still have plenty of fun with prepositions. The easiest upgrade is to substitute normal prepositions with cumbersome compound prepositions cobbled out of nouns, conjunctions and other flotsam and jetsam of the English language.

Why say “the vendor’s rights the pursuant to contract” when you mean “the vendor’s rights under the contract”?

Plain English Anatomy™ Noun | Verb | Adjective | Adverb | Preposition | Conjunction | Latin | Germany | Flannel | Legal triplicate | Nominalisation | Murder your darlings