"I wonder what his favorite word is" vs "I wonder what's his favorite word"

Question

These both sound off to me. Ending a sentence with "is" just doesn't read well in my opinion, though neither does shoving it somewhere earlier in the sentence like in the second example. This is just based off sense, I can't explain why I feel neither example works for me. Still what do you all think? Which one is more palatable for you? Would you word it differently?

Answer 1

For what it’s worth, it’s fairly common to end a sentence with “is”. In fact you may be surprised at just how common it is :)

Both sentences you give are correct, but the first would be the form used more often, I think.