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Блог / Preposition Mistakes: 16 Real Examples and How to Fix Them
Preposition Mistakes: 16 Real Examples and How to Fix Them
Prepositions are small words with large consequences. Which one a verb or noun takes is often arbitrary and differs from language to language, so most preposition errors come from translating directly. The examples below are real sentences that people sent to Proofread Bot.
The corrections are written in formal, academic English, so contractions are spelled out in full. Where a contracted or colloquial form is common in everyday writing, it is shown underneath as the informal version.
1. In, on, or at for time
✓ Matt walked to school in the morning.
✓ Steve met Susie on Monday.
- at for clock times and holidays: at 5:00, at night, at Christmas
- on for days and dates: on Monday, on July 4
- in for longer periods: in the morning, in May, in 2024
2. In, on, or at for place
✓ What did Mary do in class today?
✓ I was in New York last summer.
✓ He played four parts on page 205.
✓ They were at the movies.
In is used for enclosed spaces and cities; at for points and events; on for surfaces, pages, and lines. "Been to" is correct with the present perfect ("I have been to New York"), but "was to" is not.
3. Wrong preposition after a verb
✓ What happened to you last weekend?
✓ An airstrike wipes out a facility producing the weapon.
✓ She is married to a dentist.
✓ The North Korean and Russian revolutions began because of similar reasons.
Because introduces a clause with a verb ("because they were poor"); because of introduces a noun ("because of poverty").
4. Prepositions that are not needed
✓ We discussed his plans.
✓ Where did they go?
✓ The French thrived on the fur trade.
See more in redundant words in academic writing.
5. Missing prepositions
✓ Josh goes to the store.
✓ Most experts agree that no other chemistry is going to disrupt lithium-ion.
6. Ending a sentence with a preposition
✓ From whom did you learn that?
Informal: Who did you learn that from?
Ending a sentence with a preposition is not a grammatical error, and the old "rule" against it is widely rejected today. In very formal writing, however, moving the preposition forward ("from whom") is still common. Choose the version that reads more naturally in context.
Learn them in pairs
Because preposition choice is so often arbitrary, it is more effective to learn verb–preposition and adjective–preposition pairs together: depend on, interested in, responsible for, different from, married to. Proofread Bot recognizes thousands of these combinations and flags the ones that do not match.