trouble

Question

You don't know how much trouble you've saved me from.  Or does it have to be:You've saved me from so much trouble!Can this be said?

Cynthia3754 · Accepted Answer

You've saved me from so much trouble! This is best. It is the active voice and always preferable to the passive. You are also ending "You don't know how much trouble you've saved me from" with a preposition and some think in formal writing we should never end a sentence with a preposition. I just stole a little something from About.com, which explains the history of ending a sentence with a preposition.

The Language Instinct (1902)
Some teachers and some text-books maintain that a sentence should never end with a preposition or with any other insignificant word. "A preposition," said a college professor to his class, is a bad word to end a sentence with." If his practice had squared with his theory, he would have said, "A preposition is a bad word with which to end a sentence"; but his instinct for language was stronger than his doctrine.
(Adams Sherman Hill, Beginnings of Rhetoric and Composition, American Book Company, 1902)

A Senseless Old Tradition (1918)
The old tradition has been handed down, and in the schools of to-day teachers religiously insist upon the rule, "Never end a sentence with a preposition." The schoolboys' Anglo-Saxon language-sense rebelled at this, and they paraphrased the rule into "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with." And the schoolboys' instinct was right. There never was any sense in the "rule," and people go on using the prohibited idiom every day.
(James C. Fernald, Expressive English, Funk & Wagnalls, 1918)

Unstrained Sentences (1920)
Unless emphasis is sought, do not strain to keep the often-prescribed rule that no sentence should end with a preposition. Ending a sentence with a preposition does not necessarily weaken a sentence.
(George Burton Hotchkiss and Edward Jones Killduff,Handbook of Business English, Harper & Brothers, 1920)

A Cherished Superstition (1926)
It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be kept true to their name and placed before the word they govern in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late. . . . Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are "inelegant" are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards.
(A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry W. Fowler, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1926)

The Custom of the Language (1953)
In some expressions the preposition is by the custom of the language forced to the end.
(G.H. Vallins, Better English, Pan, 1953)

A Durable Superstition (1983)
Note that it is permissible to end a sentence with a preposition, despite a durable superstition that it is an error. He told me where to stand at is an error, but not because the preposition at is at the end;at shouldn't be in the sentence at all.
(Edward D. Johnson, The Washington Square Press Handbook of Good English, 1983)

John Dryden's Maxim (1996)
It was John Dryden, the 17th-century poet and dramatist, who first promulgated the doctrine that a preposition may not be used at the end of a sentence. Grammarians in the 18th century refined the doctrine, and the rule has since become one of the most venerated http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/maximterm.htm of schoolroom grammar. But sentences ending with prepositions can be found in the works of most of the great writers since the Renaissance. In fact, English http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/syntax.htm not only allows but sometimes even requires final placement of the preposition.
(The American Heritage Book of English Usage, Houghton Mifflin, 1996)

A Pointless Worry (2002)
We also have evidence that the postponed preposition was, in fact, a regular feature in some constructions in http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/oeterm.htm. No feature of the language can be more firmly rooted than if it survives from Old English. . . . The preposition at the end has always been an idiomatic feature of English. It would be pointless to worry about the few who believe it is a mistake.
(Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, 2002)

An Antiquated Superstition (2004)
Contrary to popular belief, it is not a mortal sin to end a sentence with a preposition, as long as the sentence sounds natural and its meaning is clear. . . . It is absolutely antiquated to forbid ending a sentence with a preposition.
(Michael Strumpf and Auriel Douglas, The Grammar Bible, Henry Holt and Company, 2004)

Fivejedjon · Answer

Cynthia3754QuoteYou've saved me from so much trouble! This is best. It is the active voice and always preferable to the passive.

Well, two points occur to me.

The first is that PJ's alternative, "You don't know how much trouble you've saved me from" is also active.
The second is that, in my opinion, the active is not always 'preferable to the passive'.

Cynthia3754some think in formal writing we should never end a sentence with a preposition.

You provided several quotations to show that ending a sentence with a prepostion is not a fault. Why do you then recommend that PJ not do this?

CalifJim · Answer

PreciousJonesYou don't know how much trouble you've saved me from. ( ! )

Fine. Dramatic, hyperbolic, and exclamatory. Also, I can't tell you how much trouble you've saved me from!

PreciousJonesYou've saved me from so much trouble!

Fine. Less drama here, but some excitement.

CJ

Cynthia3754 · Answer

You are so right... I have had a long day.  Well, I provided those examples, because I so often jump in and get in the middle of a debate about whether something is correct or not.  And I know that people still debate about whether it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition.  Just as you say the active is not always preferable to the passive.  I was taught that it is always preferable, except perhaps in poetry or certain prose. Here is the USA our grammar checkers actually underline the passive voice in red for us and will change the wording into the active voice if we allow.

CalifJim · Answer

Cynthia3754I know that people still debate about whether it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition.

That's true, but on this forum we moved on from that debate long ago. Almost without exception all of us here now accept prepositions at the end of sentences and dismiss any advice to the contrary as very old-fashioned and pretty much useless.

The same is true of the advice not to split infinitives (or is it to not split infinitives?). I am one of the very few still holding out in the 'don't split them' camp.

CJ

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