Adverb, you think? or a compound verb split by the object of the verb? "Knock off it"--not that we say or write that, except for illustrative purposes, of course. :-)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2012 11:53PM by robertb.
Or you could simply ignore the so-called rule about where to put a preposition.
Who said you can't end a sentence with a preposition anyway? Your Grade 3 English teacher?
From where did he hear it? Of what was she thinking? Upon what was it based?
About it do I give a damn (any more)? :)
The only time I venture into Grammar Police territory (around here) is if the GP calls out somebody else and then commits an egregious English language error themselves. :)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2012 09:48PM by Nightingale.
"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put." This in response, it is said, to a criticism aimed at him for ending a sentence with a preposition.
Oh, and Miss Grundy, also taught you cannot begin a sentence with "And" or "But." But it was good enough for Ernest Hemingway, whose stories and writing style I admire.
When I applied for graduate school in English at BYU, I spelled "grammer" instead of "grammar." Crap. They let me in anyway and I did a year of passable work before I decided I didn't have any real talent. Met some wonderful professors, though, and enjoyed the graduate teaching.
The idea that a sentence should not end with a preposition originated with English poet John Dryden. Does anyone even know anymore who John Dryden was, much less care how he though sentences should end?
It was right here on RfM that I first had the thought that people might not appreciate having their pronunciation corrected.
Or having attention drawn to lapses in correct grammar...
Or having attention drawn to spelling errors (which have a variety of ontogenesis)
Or using words like ontogenesis which almost no one will know.
All these tendencies have one thing in common which I did not get even after leaving Mormonism. They are an example of black-and-white thinking superseding simple empathy.
It is far better to consider the impact of a correction on the PERSON being corrected than on the error being corrected.
I think of posting here as somewhere between talking and writing. I agree correcting people here is out-of-place. Except for long blocks of text without paragraph breaks. I don't like that. Text is too hard to read that way and tiring.