Following up on an earlier post about ending sentences with prepositions, Professor Wayne Scheiss posts at legalwriting.net what he thinks of some of the comments he got on the post. Here is what really caught my eye about his critique:
My commenters, I suspect, are real lawyers, practicing law. This is one of those times when I’m glad I’m not a real lawyer; no judges or supervisors scrutinize my writing. I live in academia, writing what I want, how I want, when I want. I’m lucky. So when real lawyers ask me about the rule, I usually tell them that to be safe, don’t end sentences with prepositions.
It’s not so bad, professor. Most writing instruction I have attended advises to ignore strict grammatical rules when doing so will result in a sentence with greater impact.