Problems and Common Mistakes On Prepositions of Place At, In, and on

Abstract

Imagine someone saying to you “I am going on a long trip.” Do you feel,

with a kind of jolt, that the preposition “on” is out of place, and that it would be

better and more idiomatic English to say “in long trip” (or “on long trip”)

instead? Do you sometimes wonder which preposition to use — should it be

“centered around” or “centered on”? Do we “protest about or ( against) an

injustice, or omit the preposition altogether? Where variants exist, are they

equally acceptable, or are some preferable to others, some to be avoided?

These are the kind of questions raised in this paper (Problems and

Common mistakes on Prepositions of place At, In, and On ). It highlights the

growing awareness that, to quote one authority, there is “an epidemic of

prepositional anarchy around.” The two main causes of this widespread

epidemic are uncertainty about standard usage and, less forgivably, indifference

to its dictates.