Author: Awais Farooq
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Unnecessary prepositions
One of the most common preposition mistakes is adding an unnecessary at to the end of a question. Where is your brother at? Although this is common in some English dialects, it’s considered nonstandard in writing. You can fix the problem by simply deleting the at. Where is your brother? On the bright side, if you’re not sure which preposition…
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Ending a sentence with a preposition
The old claim that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition has been debunked. It’s not true now and it never was true. Writers who insist that a preposition can’t end a sentence often end up with stilted and unnatural-sounding sentences: There’s no one else to hide behind. (Correct and natural) There’s no one else behind whom to hide. (Correct…
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Preposition examples
Unfortunately, there’s no reliable formula for determining which preposition to use with a particular combination of words. The best way to learn which prepositions go with which words is to read as much high-quality writing as you can and pay attention to which combinations sound right. Here are a few examples of the most common prepositions used…
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Types of prepositions
Prepositions indicate direction, time, location, and spatial relationships, as well as other abstract types of relationships. Direction: Look to the left and you’ll see our destination. Time: We’ve been working since this morning. Location: We saw a movie at the theater. Space: The dog hid under the table.
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What is a preposition?
“Vampires! Zombies! Werewolves!” “Where?!” “Behind you!” Thank goodness for prepositions. Imagine not knowing where the danger lay . . . Prepositions tell us where or when something is in relation to something else. When monsters are approaching, it’s good to have these special words to tell us where those monsters are. Are they behind us or in front…
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When to avoid adverbs
Ernest Hemingway is often held up as an example of a great writer who detested adverbs and advised other writers to avoid them. In reality, it’s impossible and unnecessary to avoid adverbs altogether. Sometimes we need them, and all writers (even Hemingway) use them occasionally. The trick is to avoid superfluous adverbs. When your verb or adjective…
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Placement of adverbs
In general, adverbs should be placed as close as possible to the words they are intended to modify. Putting the adverb in the wrong spot can produce an awkward sentence at best and completely change the meaning at worst. Consider the difference in meaning between the following two sentences: I almost dropped all the papers I was…
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Degrees of comparison
Like adjectives, many adverbs can show degrees of comparison, although it’s slightly less common to use them this way. With certain flat adverbs (adverbs that look exactly the same as their adjective counterparts), the comparative and superlative forms look the same as the adjective comparative and superlative forms. It’s usually better to use stronger, more precise adverbs (or stronger, more precise…
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Adverbs and sentences
Some adverbs can modify entire sentences—unsurprisingly, these are called sentence adverbs. Common ones include generally, fortunately, interestingly, and accordingly. Sentence adverbs don’t describe one particular thing in the sentence—instead, they describe a general feeling about all of the information in the sentence. Fortunately, we got there in time. Interestingly, no one at the auction seemed interested in bidding on the…
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Adverbs and other adverbs
You can use an adverb to describe another adverb. In the following sentence, the adverb almost is modifying the adverb always (and they’re both modifying the adjective right): The weather report is almost always right. In fact, if you wanted to, you could use several adverbs to modify another adverb. Huan sings rather enormously too loudly. However, that often produces weak and clunky sentences…