It seems a lot of the media do follow this rule very closely. Do you have any comments?

PS - Have had a brief look at some of the stuff at your site and I will certainly bookmark it - and tell my mum to do the same; as soon as I can show her how to run Netscape!

If you're as conscious as your grandmum would have you be about such matters, then you're probably going to look carefully at sentences that end in prepositions. If the sentence sounds better by avoiding that structure, then make the change; otherwise, leave it alone. Most historians of the language seem to agree, nowadays, that there's no compelling reason that a sentence can't end in a preposition and that, until late in the nineteenth century, no one paid much attention to the matter. Still, it is one thing that people who know a little about grammar can spot a mile away, so I would certainly avoid it on memos to the boss, job application letters, etc.

Thank you.

Notice that when I begin a sentence with an adverb clause, I put a comma after it. (If the adverb clause comes later in the sentence, I'll have to determine if the clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence or not before I'll know whether to set it off with a comma.)

• 1a. "Your City/State/Country (if other than U.S.A.)" atrocious grammar. The binding of the virgule is not understood to be tighter or looser than that of the parentheses. So, are you requesting the information (City, State, and Country) only from those outside the U.S.A, or are you requesting City and State from everyone, and Country from those not in the U.S.A.? (Or is that U.S.A?)
• 1b. The virgule is most commonly used to indicate "or." Aren't you interested in collecting more than just one of City, State, and Country? Of course, if I answered with NYC only, you might make a very good guess on all three.
• 2. When the word "eighteen" must be split over two lines (which begs the question of whether a word must ever be split), should the "t" be doubled? That is, should it appear as "eight-
  teen"?
• 3. Similarly, when the word "naïve" is split, should the diaeresis be removed, giving "na-
  ive"?

Your other questions. . . Your instincts about not breaking either word are probably best. Avoid the problem. You can't add another "t" to eighteen, so I think you'd have to break eighteen after the "t." As for naive, you're probably the last person in these parts to use a diaeresis in the spelling of that word anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, the hyphen (if you did break the word, at na-ive) would mean pretty much the same thing as the diaeresis is supposed to mean anyway (that these two vowels are meant to be read and spoken separately).

Thanks again.

However, it would be a good idea not to use these abbreviations at all except in source citations and within parentheses. Even within parenthetical comments, most writers nowadays will use the English translations of these abbreviations.

Authority: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

There is also something called the polite question. "When a polite request is phrased as a question, using a period emphasizes the request: Would you please send me a copy. Using a question mark emphasizes the politness: Would you please send me a copy?" Frankly, the distinction is lost on me.

But I can't imagine why someone would end a rhetorical question with a period.

(The quoted material on polite questions comes from Quick Access: Reference for Writers by Lynn Quitman Troyka. Simon & Schuster: New York. 1995.)

It is also used to indicate a pause in one's thought . . . sometimes.

1. I would be surprised if most people knew what a pterodactyl was.
2. I would be surprised if most people knew what a pterodactyl were.

If you want to see the were in the sentence (just for the fun of it?), you could write the following: "I would be surprised if he were knowledgeable about pterodactyls."

Secondly, is it true that when using pronouns one should always be referring to the noun that directly precedes it? Sometimes I feel as if I am repeating my noun too many times when I use this method, and I would rather use a pronoun to give the sentences some variety. For example, if a writer is writing a story about one person named John, couldn't the writer refer to John as "him" or "he" later on in the story without re-stating John's name? Does this situation create a dangling modifier? Thank you very much. I will be waiting for your response.

Pronouns do not have to refer directly to the noun immediately preceding it. That goes against the grain of recycling, doesn't it? The only hard and fast rule here is that it must always be quite clear to whom or what the pronoun does refer. If the antecedent of the pronouns are clear, then use away! (But it doesn't hurt to bring in John's name from time to time to remind your readers whom you're talking about.) Again, this rule may be different in newspaper writing, where the need to avoid possible ambiguity becomes obsessive

A proliferation of pronouns doesn't necessarily create dangling modifiers. That term refers to the situation in which a writer creates a modifier and then doesn't give the modifier the thing it needs to modify. "Getting our news strictly from television, a poor understanding of national events is inevitable." The poor understanding doesn't get our news strictly from television. We do. Thus, the modifier (a participial phrase in this case) "dangles" at the beginning of the sentence. Rewrite it this way: "Getting our news strictly from television, we inevitably have a poor understanding of national events."