“Speaking solely for myself” and then continuing with “I would much rather” is redundant.”
No, it’s not. It is not always the case that people are speaking solely for themselves when they begin a sentence, “I would much rather...”
I inserted “Speaking solely for myself” to try and avoid rancor, thinking—wrongly, it appears—that it would negate any accusatory tone my sentence might have seemed to convey. The fact that it had a separate purpose also saves it from redundancy.
“You may have learned that ending a sentence with a preposition is a serious breach of grammatical etiquette. It doesn’t take a grammarian to spot a sentence-ending preposition, so this is an easy rule to get caught up on (!). Although it is often easy to remedy the offending preposition, sometimes it isn’t, and repair efforts sometimes result in a clumsy sentence. “Indicate the book you are quoting from” is not greatly improved with “Indicate from which book you are quoting.”
“Based on shaky historical precedent, the rule itself is a latecomer to the rules of writing. Those who dislike the rule are fond of recalling Churchill’s rejoinder: “That is nonsense up with which I shall not put.” We should also remember the child’s complaint: “What did you bring that book that I don’t like to be read to out of up for?”
Your post did, however, show me the futility of thinking we could ever correct each others’ spelling and grammar without rancor. I will, therefore, continue to ignore things like “Achiles heal” and “tow the line,” since any attempt to do otherwise would be sure to attract the sort of misguided and rancorous attempts to strike back that are contained in your post to me.