On one hand it does make some sense, because we have PREpositions, which have to come before the object they modify. "Put the cup the shelf on" is never a valid word order because it breaks that rule. Of course, if a preposition comes at the end of a sentence, it can't come before anything. The problem begins with the fact that English has prepositions that are part of a verb: "Put down", "hang up", "run away", and these 'prepositions' (which I'd rather call particles or adverbs or at least anything that distinguishes them from regular prepositions) often end up at the end of sentences through English's funky word order rules. You'll note this generally happens in clauses beginning with interrogatives such as "who", "where". I think the oft cited Victorian bogeymen who supposedly invented these rules simply conflated the two and, honestly, I can understand where they were coming from.
Excuse my little sidetrack: I agree it's a choice but when you are writing a third person POV and you don't use tags it reads like you are changing POV. It's interesting, looking into writing "deep POV in third-person narration" I see that style has only recently been used. Deep POV (point of view) I found it pulling me out of the story to be switching from 1st to 3rd person, with the inner monologue becoming an additional distraction. It's funny that this style would be OK to someone who thought italicized thoughts were distracting. I will try to be more open-minded in the future. [/end sidetrack]
I don't find italics distracting unless they're peppered all over the place, in the same way I'd find any font change distracting if it was used too much. But I do think they're often unnecessary, and they were in that particular example.
