Short answer: yes, you can. "Ending a sentence with a preposition" is one of the most widely taught grammar rules in English — and one of the least supported by how English actually works.
The idea traces back to 17th-century writers, notably John Dryden, who tried to make English grammar behave more like Latin — a language where sentences genuinely cannot end in a preposition. English was never bound by that structure, and the rule got repeated in style guides for centuries anyway, long after most linguists stopped taking it seriously.
Rewriting these to avoid the trailing preposition produces exactly the kind of stiff, unnatural sentence the "rule" was supposed to prevent: "For what are you looking?" "About that is the book I told you." Nobody talks like that, and forcing it doesn't make the writing more correct — it makes it worse.
Not because it's wrong, but because a trailing preposition can occasionally make formal or very precise writing feel a touch informal. In those contexts, it's a style choice, not a grammar requirement:
Both are grammatically correct. Choose based on the tone you want, not out of fear of breaking a rule that was never real to begin with.
Keep the preposition where it sounds natural. If moving it to avoid ending the sentence makes the sentence more awkward — which it almost always does — leave the preposition where it is.
Check your sentence structure →