Common English usage misconceptions

This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be misconceptions.

This can create problems, as described by Reginald Close: Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate.

[1]Many usage forms are commonly perceived as nonstandard or errors despite being widely accepted or endorsed by authoritative descriptions.

For example, respondents to a 1986 BBC poll were asked to submit "the three points of grammatical usage they most disliked".

[3] Mignon Fogarty writes that "nearly all grammarians agree that it's fine to end sentences with prepositions, at least in some cases.

[4] But "every major grammarian for more than a century has tried to debunk" this idea; "it's perfectly natural to put a preposition at the end of a sentence, and it has been since Anglo-Saxon times.

"[9] Many examples of terminal prepositions occur in classic works of literature, including the plays of Shakespeare.

[15] The Chicago Manual of Style says: There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as "and", "but", or "so".

[16][c]Regarding the word "and", Fowler's Modern English Usage states, "There is a persistent belief that it is improper to begin a sentence with And, but this prohibition has been cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo-Saxon times onwards.

"[17] Garner's Modern American Usage adds, "It is rank superstition that this coordinating conjunction cannot properly begin a sentence.

In fact, doing so is highly desirable in any number of contexts, as many style books have said (many correctly pointing out that but is more effective than however at the beginning of a sentence)".

[27] Some writers suggest avoiding nested negatives as a rule of thumb for clear and concise writing.

This prescription is contradicted by vast evidence from English usage, and Merriam-Webster finds no source for the rule before a published letter by a physician, Deborah Leary, in 1949.