Can you start sentences with prepositional phrases

Short phrase okay with or without a comma. This is one of the few places where how a sentence sounds determines the punctuation. Without my work , I was tempted to skip class. Short, but pauses. It is obvious that work does not describe I. Prepositional phrases layered together usually have a comma. On the morning before my birthday , my parents surprised me with a trip to Hawaii.

After vacuuming my brother collapsed on the couch. Grammarly states that both with and without the comma are correct. But on the other hand, Purdue says that you should not use a comma if the introductory phrase is fewer than five words. But I tend to think that Perdue offers the best advice. But whatever style you choose, make sure you are consistent with your comma use. Winston Churchill tackled this grammar point with this quote.

With it, he was pointing out how silly it is to always obey the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition. A good job is hard to come by. In our modern lives, we have so much to be grateful for. We have so much to be grateful for in our modern lives.

Political science is what I want to focus on. I want to focus on political science. When you use a prepositional phrase at the beginning of a sentence, the only decision to make is when to add a comma. If the phrase is more than three or four words, I would usually add a comma. But for two words, perhaps not.

For all forms of informal writing, there is no problem at all. There are no hard and fast grammar rules to follow for these prepositions, except to be consistent with your use.

My days are spent writing and blogging, as well as testing and taming new technology. So basically, they tried to flex their grammar knowledge and failed. These days there are quite a few people who find the rule about not ending with a preposition antiquated. So even if this person quoted the correct rule, it would be one that can be debated.

Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to begin a sentence with a preposition. However, the question of whether you may end a sentence with one is still open. And for the record - I'm firmly planted in the camp of no respectable sentence ending in a preposition even though I may write them here on occasion.

People are given the rule of thumb of not ending with a preposition because they are often extraneous. As long as the preposition is not extraneous, it's fine. Otherwise, you are going to be using the famous phrase "That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put! Was it Churchill who said, "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

If I'm not mistaken, outside of formal writing, perhaps, most editors don't bat an eye at a sentence ending in a preposition. Yeah, I know. But I still can't stand it. Even from my favorite authors. I also can't handle that useless Oxford comma, either. And I know all too well the argument about that guy, so I'm not going there in this poor poster's first thread, lol. Take a look at this photo caption and tell me the Oxford comma is useless:.

For those who don't care to click through, it's a picture of Merle Haggard captioned: "The documentary was filmed over two years.

Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall. I'm sorry, I didn't see your post I repeated the quote. I think we were writing at the same time, I thought it was funny it brought the same quote to mind for each of us! No worries, I'm not one to get all up in arms over something like that.

Just over used often enough to annoy me. Actually, it's completely impossible to end a sentence with a preposition, since the definition of a preposition is a word that shows a relationship between two other things in a sentence - it can't be a preposition without a phrase containing an object.

If there is no prepositional phrase, if there is no object, there is no preposition. That thing that looks like a preposition at the end of the sentence is Or perhaps more accurately, part of the verb itself. In Spanish, they are actually entirely different verbs - which is how this got started.

In Latin languages, they have separate verbs for each of these instances. In English we add more words to base verbs for these nuances of meaning.

Often the only way to get rid of those "prepositions at the end of the sentence" and not get a convoluted Winston Churchill sentence is to replace a perfectly good verb of Germanic origin with one of Latin origin. German verbs also have these bits, but in the infinitive they are smashed up against the main part of the verb. When used in sentences they move all about, often separated from the main verb by entire phrases, and often end up Well, if it is good enough to begin the Bible's first sentence, it is good enough to start mine!

Never heard that rule, and I think I've read every English grammar handbook in the library. I'm using The Art of Styling Sentences with my writing students right now, and a sentence beginning with a prepositional phrase is one of the patterns the author recommends. As pp have said, maybe you are thinking of the rule about ending a sentence with a preposition, or starting a sentence with a conjunction. In Designing Women Charlene tells this anecdote:.