Never End a Sentence with At.

This incorrect usage drives me crazy. To me "Where are you at?" sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. And it's getting worse.

You may remember an English teacher telling you never to end a sentence with a preposition. That is the general rule because a preposition needs an object, and the object should come after the preposition. However, "The door through which I walked..." sounds funny. So we just say "The door I walked through...." The object of through is door. It's still there, just in a different place.

"Where are you at?" on the other hand has no object at all. The only pronoun (no nouns) is you, but that is the subject. It is perfectly sufficient to simply say "Where are you?" The at is not necessary grammatically or semantically, because where identifies that this is a question of location.

I have been hearing people use the incorrect form with increasing frequency. I hear it all the time from students. I've heard it from teachers and newscasters. This Sunday, I even heard it from my pastor. I do not understand why this phrasing has become popular and seemingly acceptable. Many changes in language come about through laziness. For example, we no longer pronounce the k in knight. However, that cannot explain this phenomenon, because people are actually adding a word. Hopefully this indicates that the trend will not be long-lived.