Some of the "rules" of English grammar that you learned in school were devised by pedants who believed that English was inferior to Latin and should be improved by forcing it onto the Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. But English is descended from an ancestral German dialect, not from Latin, and certain of the rules based on Latin grammar simply do not fit the structure of English. Latin has a rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, but English has no such rule.

Often what looks like a preposition in an English sentence is really not a preposition but a part of the verb (the technical term is adverbial particle). Consider these verbs: to put, to put up, to put up with. Obviously these are not the same verbs, and equally obviously the words that look like familiar prepositions are actually a part of each of the latter two verbs.

On this subject, a story involving Winston Churchill is often told. When an editor dared to change a sentence of Churchill's that appeared to end inappropriately with a preposition, Churchill responded by writing to the editor, "This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put." His purpose was to illustrate the awkwardness that can result from rigid adherence to the notion that prepositions at the end of sentences are always incorrect.

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Some of the "rules" of English grammar that you learned in school were devised by pedants who believed that English was inferior to Latin and should be improved by forcing it onto the Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. But English is descended from an ancestral German dialect, not from Latin, and certain of the rules based on Latin grammar simply do not fit the structure of English. Latin has a rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, but English has no such rule.

Often what looks like a preposition in an English sentence is really not a preposition but a part of the verb (the technical term is adverbial particle). Consider these verbs: to put, to put up, to put up with. Obviously these are not the same verbs, and equally obviously the words that look like familiar prepositions are actually a part of each of the latter two verbs.

On this subject, a story involving Winston Churchill is often told. When an editor dared to change a sentence of Churchill's that appeared to end inappropriately with a preposition, Churchill responded by writing to the editor, "This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put." His purpose was to illustrate the awkwardness that can result from rigid adherence to the notion that prepositions at the end of sentences are always incorrect.