Notes on Prepositions: Supplementary

Prepositions of Time

We use at to designate specific times.

• The train is due at 12:15 p.m.

We use on to designate days and dates.

• My brother is coming on Monday.
• We're having a party on the Fourth of July.

We use in for nonspecific times during a day, a month, a season, or a year.

• She likes to jog in the morning.
• It's too cold in winter to run outside.
• He started the job in 1971.
• He's going to quit in August.

Prepositions of Place

We use at for specific addresses.

•  Mr. Green lives at 55 Boretz Road in Durham.

We use on to designate names of streets, avenues, etc.

• Her house is on Boretz Road.

And we use in for the names of land-areas (towns, counties, states, countries, and continents).

• She lives in Durham.
• Durham is in Windham County.
• Windham County is in Connecticut. 

We use for when we measure time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years).

• He held his breath for seven minutes.She's lived there for seven years.
• The British and Irish have been quarreling for seven centuries.

We use since with a specific date or time.

• He's worked here since 1970.
• She's been sitting in the waiting room since two-thirty.

Prepositions of Location: in, at, and on and No Preposition
IN (the) bed* the bedroom the car (the) class* the library* school*	AT class* home the library* the office school* work	ON the bed* the ceiling the floor the horse the plane the train	NO PREPOSITION downstairs downtown inside outside upstairs uptown
* You may sometimes use different prepositions for these locations.

Prepositions of Movement

We use to in order to express movement toward a place.They were driving to work together.

• She's going to the dentist's office this morning.

Toward and towards are also helpful prepositions to express movement. These are simply variant spellings of the same word; use whichever sounds better to you.

• We're moving toward the light.
• This is a big step towards the project's completion.

With the words home, downtown, uptown, inside, outside, downstairs, upstairs, we use no preposition. Grandma went upstairs

• Grandpa went home.
• They both went outside.

Prepositions with Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs

Prepositions are sometimes so firmly wedded to other words that they have practically become one word.

NOUNS and PREPOSITIONS
approval of awareness of belief in concern for confusion about desire for	fondness for grasp of hatred of hope for interest in love of	need for participation in reason for respect for success in understanding of

ADJECTIVES and PREPOSITIONS
afraid of angry at aware of capable of careless about familiar with	fond of happy about interested in jealous of made of married to	proud of similar to sorry for sure of tired of worried about

VERBS and PREPOSITIONS
apologize for ask about ask for belong to bring up care for find out	give up grow up look for look forward to look up make up pay for	prepare for study for talk about think about trust in work for worry about

Idiomatic Expressions with Prepositions

• agree to a proposal, agree with a person, agree on a price, agree in principle
• argue about a matter, argue with a person, argue for/against a proposition
• compare to (to show likenesses), compare with (to show differences and sometimes similarities)
• correspond to a thing, correspond with a person
• differ from an unlike thing, differ with a person
• live at an address, live in a house or city, live on a street, live with other people