"...and all would have to be accounted for." Improper sentence ending at 'for'. Please suggest alternative [duplicate]

You do not want to end your sentence with for because you read "somewhere" that is improper.

I will give you a place to read the opposite:

There is nothing wrong with ending a sentence with for.

This should solve your problem.

On a general note: beware of any and all (restrictive) grammar and style advises that have accumulated over the years and that tend to be:

• incomplete
• based on false assumptions
• unworkable
• out of touch with linguistic reality
• simply wrong

Most generalized "rules" tend to fall into one or more of these categories. Famous examples include don't use the passive (given by someone who showed no understanding of passive constructions to start with) and don't split infinitives (unless they mean that you should not write wo [something else] rk).

It's absolutely fine as it is. The advice to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition is pretty old-fashioned and not something to be worried about. As long as it doesn't sound clumsy, just do it.

If your example still doesn't sound right to you, consider replacing 'accounted for' with 'addressed'.

Ditto those who say that "don't end a sentence with a preposition" is a rule that should be cheerfully ignored.

That said, if you are writing for a teacher or an editor who insists that you follow this rule, the conventional way to comply is to reword the sentence to say "for which", with "which" referring back to the appropriate word. In this case, " ... for all of which we would have to account". If that sentence seems awkward and harder to understand: exactly. That's why the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule is stupid. It forces us to make sentences that are more complex and harder to understand just to comply with an arbitrary rule.

In this case you could also do it by eliminating the passive, for example, "... and we would have to account for all of these." Or you could reword the sentence to not use a preposition, like "... and all of these would have to be considered" or "... and solutions would have to be found for all of these."

I've often had conversations, in grammar and in many other areas of life, where someone tells me that I should follow some rule, and when I ask why I should do this, they say, "But I just told you! Because it's the rule!" I ask, "But why is it a rule? What good does following this rule accomplish?" and they stare at me blankly like I'm insane, or say something like, "No, it really is the rule. See, it says so right here in this book." And they seem to honestly be unable to comprehend that the fact that somebody who called himself an expert wrote something in a book might somehow NOT be binding on all humanity for the rest of history. Of course if someone CAN give you a good reason for a rule, if they can point out how following this rules serves some good purpose, that's a different story.

As Winston Churchill allegedly said but almost certainly didn't, the idea that one should not end a sentence with a preposition is "Nonsense, up with which we should not put." The sentence is fine as it is, doubly so because "account for" is a phrasal verb and not just a random combination of a verb and a preposition.

You've asked for an alternative to your phrase. In this case, I would propose the following (using whichever pronoun is applicable in place of "we"):

"... and [we] would have to account for [anything/everything/all of it]."

While it's true that the idea "never end a sentence with a preposition" is prescriptivist, I personally prefer to avoid doing so when an alternate form can be presented without sounding clunky.