Kirk Mahoney . com

Some days I can barely contain myself.

Those are the days that I like to label as “Prepositions Gone Wild”.

As with the barely-legal women who flaunt more than they should in the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, it seems that many Americans like to flaunt more prepositions than they should.

When, where, why, and how did American instruction about prepositions go astray?

In particular, why are so many Americans prone to inserting extraneous prepositions into their speech and writing? How did they learn to do this? When and where did this happen? Were they absent that day from school? Did they not get the memo?

A “Prepositions Gone Wild” day is a day that I hear at least two of these phrases:

• “for free”
• “on yesterday”
• “on today”
• “on tomorrow”
• “where at“

Here is a blog post about each of the above phrases:

• “Download it for free.”
• “I saw him on yesterday.”
• “It will start on today.”
• “I’ll bring that to you on tomorrow.”
• “… where it has a scar at now.”

Have you noticed any other common phrases with extraneous prepositions? Please contact me, and I will write about them here!

I often hear one of these expressions when the other one is required.

Problem:
These two expressions are not synonyms.

Explanation:
My wife recently heard a man say (quote) “I will wait on you in the car.” (unquote).

The preposition “on” bothered her, and we discussed how frequently each of us has heard “wait on” when “wait for” was required.

The common English blunder seems to be to use a form of “wait on” when a form of “wait for” is required.

Someone who (quote) “waits on” (unquote) someone else is acting as a waiter or waitress.

So (quote) “I will wait on you in the car.” (unquote) literally means (quote) “I will act as your waiter (or waitress) in the car.” (unquote).

The man whom my wife heard should have said (quote) “I will wait for you in the car.” (unquote) because that person was not saying that he would act as a waiter in “the car”.

Solution:
Use “… wait on you …” when you are a waiter or waitress; otherwise use “… wait for you …”.

I heard this expression last evening on a Travel Channel television program.

Problems:
1. The verbs are incorrect.
2. A preposition is missing.

Explanation:
The TV program was reviewing night life in Las Vegas.

One of the featured locations was a night club in which performers sit and stand on swings hung from the ceiling.

The narrator claimed that an exciting feature was that the club had (quote) “swings that raise and lower from the ceiling” (unquote).

The first problem is that the verbs “raise” and “lower” are transitive verbs — that is, verbs that require both a direct subject and one or more objects — whereas intransitive verbs — that is, verbs that do not take an object — are required here.

Examples of transitive verbs include “cut” and “hit” and “put”.

Examples of intransitive verbs include “die” and “rot” and “sit”.

(Quote) “swings that raise and lower from the ceiling” (unquote) requires intransitive verbs, and “rise” and “fall” are the appropriate corrections to “raise” and “lower”, respectively.

These corrections give us (quote) “swings that rise and fall from the ceiling” (unquote).

I believe that this use of “raise” and “lower” as intransitive verbs is connected to the use of “lay” as an intransitive verb — as in (quote) “Please lay down now!” (unquote) — through a popular but incorrect assumption that transitive verbs are interchangeable with intransitive verbs.

The second problem is a lack of parallelism. It makes no sense to say (quote) “rise from the ceiling” (unquote), so the first and second verbs may not share the preposition “from”.

Instead, the verb “rise” requires its own preposition in relation to (quote) “the ceiling” (unquote). That required preposition is “to”.

I believe that the omission of “to” after the first verb is related to the common English blunder of omitting all prepositions but the final one in a list of verbs in a sentence. My impression is that this blunder comes from speakers and writers not thinking ahead, perhaps because they were not taught about the importance of parallelism in sentences.

Solution:
“swings that rise to and fall from the ceiling”

I have been contemplating these two imperative constructions for the past several days.

Question:
Are both constructions correct?

Explanation:
The verb “Give” in either construction is the imperative verb.

The phrase (quote) “the money” (unquote) in either construction is the direct object.

The pronoun “us” in either construction is the indirect object.

In other words, the speaker of the sentence is telling the listener to take an action (”Give”) with a direct object (”the money”) on behalf of an indirect object (”us”).

So you might wonder why the preposition “to” is required in one construction and is NOT required in the other construction.

According to the discussion about the dative case in English at Wikipedia, the indirect object of an action does not have to be expressed with a preposition such as “to” or “for”.

In other words, the objective pronoun “us” may immediately follow the main verb and be used in a dative manner, as long as that verb has a direct object, too.

So the preposition “to” in (quote) “Give to us the money!” (unquote) is optional in current English usage.

This gives [to] us the answer to the original question.

Answer:
Yes, both constructions, along with (quote) “Give to us the money!” (unquote), are correct.

I saw this in an email message.

Problems:
1. A direct object is missing.
2. The wrong preposition was used.

Explanation:
The email message included an attached announcement about a reorganization.

The writer sent the email message to the people near the top of the new organization.

She wanted to make sure that everyone in the new organization — all Americans — got the news.

Even if we convert the chiefly British preposition “amongst” to the more common preposition “among”, we still do not have the solution.

(Quote) “Please distribute among your team.” (unquote) still has two problems: (1) a direct object is missing; (2) the preposition “among” does not go with the singular noun “team”.

The solution to the first problem is to put the pronoun “this” immediately after the verb “distribute”.

The solution to the second problem is to replace the preposition “among”, which requires three or more parties, with the preposition “to”, which requires a minimum of one party.

Solution:
“Please distribute this to your team.”

As I write this, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average has dropped from a record high one year ago to a five-year low.

Insanity is often defined as expecting your personal situation to improve while you continue to do what you always have done.

Protecting your working life from a worsening economy requires standing out — in a good way — from the crowd.

I believe that communicating better makes this possible.

Here are ten tips to keep working in a worsening economy, all with a focus on communicating better — doing something different, so that you’ll get different results.

Tip 1. Watch your spelling.

Here are some of the misspellings that I have documented in this blog:

• misspelling “extraordinary” as E-X-T-R-A-HYPHEN-O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y
• misspelling “pronunciation” as P-R-O-N-O-U-N-C-I-A-T-I-O-N
• misspelling “likelihood” as L-I-K-E-L-Y-SPACE-H-O-O-D
• misspelling “accessible” as A-C-C-E-S-S-A-B-L-E
• misspelling “supersede” as S-U-P-E-R-C-E-D-E

You can throw off half your audience and embarrass yourself by misspelling a word in the title of one of your PowerPoint slides, in an important email message to your boss or customer, or on the front page of a white paper that you have written.

If you know that you are not a good speller, then take action, starting today, to change this.

Tip 2. Watch your punctuation.

Here are some of the punctuation problems that I have discussed in my blog:

• misusing apostrophes
• misusing commas
• misusing hyphens

You can improve your punctuation skills. Start today by buying a good book or two about punctuation.

Tip 3. Watch your words.

Picking the wrong word is another way to look bad in front of your fellow employees, your boss, or your customer or prospect.

Here are some pairs of words that give people trouble:

• affect vs. effect;
• bring vs. carry;
• come vs. go
• lie vs. lay;
• nauseous vs. nauseated.

Some might argue that many Americans do not know the difference in each of the above word pairs, so you should not worry about knowing the differences.

I disagree. Knowing the differences in these and other commonly confused word pairs can set you apart from the crowd with someone who cares — someone who can give you a raise, someone who can recommend you for a promotion, or someone who can give you new or more business.

Tip 4. Watch your grammar.

While text messaging and instant messaging have encouraged people to write in sentence fragments, not knowing how to write complete, grammatically correct sentences in other written forms — email messages, white papers, etc. — can hurt your reputation with the people who have the most influence over your finances.

Here are some common mistakes with grammar:

• putting a preposition where it does not belong, such as in (quote) “on today” (unquote);
• using “I” where “me” is required, as in (quote) “for my colleagues and I” (unquote);
• using the wrong form of a verb, as in (quote) “Can Hillary be beat?” (unquote).

I could list many other types of mistakes with grammar, but you get the point.

If you have a basic discomfort with your grammar skills, then read some books about English grammar.

If you are generally confident about these skills but wonder on occasion whether something is correct, then research your question — here or elsewhere online. That nagging feeling is usually there for a good reason; pay attention to it!

Tip 5. Watch your slang.

Although slang can be fun to use, and although the origins of various slang expressions can be fascinating, using slang in your work life can hobble your career.

Here are some types of slang:

• regional slang, as in (quote) “y’all” (unquote) or (quote) “you guys” (unquote) in place of “you”;
• ethnic slang, as in (quote) “Where you at?” (unquote) or (quote) “Git ‘er done.” (unquote);
• corporate slang, as in (quote) “open architecture” (unquote) or (quote) “on the bubble” (unquote).

Now, you might know what all of the above examples mean, but this does not guarantee that your boss, your fellow employees, or your customers do, too.

A problem with regional slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not from around here.” attitude.

A problem with ethnic slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not one of us.” attitude.

And a problem with corporate slang is that it can seem intelligent when first read or heard but will later cause the reader or listener to wonder what you meant.

Tips 6-10.

I must postpone these for my next post.

Please think about these first five tips, take a break, and then return tomorrow for the remaining tips!

I heard this a couple of weeks ago on a Discovery Channel program.

Problem:
A preposition is missing.

Explanation:
I heard a detective say (quote) “… disposing the body …” (unquote) while discussing a homicide during a Discovery Channel television program.

The correct expression is (quote) “… disposing of the body …” (unquote) because (quote) “dispose of” (unquote) is the verb phrase that means to get rid of or to discard.

I believe that the homicide detective’s omission of the preposition “of” after the verb “dispose” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit “of” than to include it.

Another possible reason for omission of the preposition “of” is that the detective mistakenly equated the verb “dispose” with the verb “discard”, the latter of which does not take the preposition.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “disposing of the body” — 165,000 matches
• “disposing the body” — 4,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used these three spellings by a ratio of 37.5-to-1, which is good but not excellent.

Solution:
“… disposing of the body …”

I recently saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The preposition “about” should never follow the verb “discuss”.

Explanation:
The definition of the verb “discuss” is to consider by argument or comment; to write or talk about.

Therefore, (quote) “discuss about” (unquote) literally can mean to talk about about.

Following the verb “discuss” with the preposition “about” seems to be a fairly common English blunder, given that a search of Google for “discuss about” (with the quotation marks) returned approximately 1,340,000 matches.

I believe that this blunder represents a belief by some people that the verbs “discuss” and “talk” are equivalent, given that (quote) “Let’s talk about it.” (unquote) is grammatically correct and given that a search of Google for “talk about” (with the quotation marks) returned approximately 120,000,000 matches.

Solution:
“Let’s discuss it.”

I saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The writer used an adjective where a prepositional phrase was required.

Explanation:
The writer of the email message was trying to say that a fund-raising campaign was in progress.

The word “underway” — spelled U-N-D-E-R-W-A-Y — is an adjective that means (quote) “occurring while under way” (unquote), with a space between “under” and “way”.

An example of proper use of the adjective “underway” is (quote) “The underway activities on the space shuttle include checking the toilets and watching the ants in the ant farm.” (unquote).

The adjective “underway” is derived from the prepositional phrase “under way” — spelled U-N-D-E-R-SPACE-W-A-Y — which means “in progress”.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
“The fund-raising campaign is under way!”

I heard this recently during a radio broadcast.

Problem:
The word “then” is not a preposition.

Explanation:
The radio broadcaster said a sentence such as (quote) “The telephone calls to the radio station during this hour were no more frequent then usual.” (unquote).

The problem with this sentence is that the word “then” — spelled T-H-E-N — is not a preposition.

Instead, this word is any of the following:

• adverb, as in (quote) “Prices were higher then.” (unquote), where “then” means (quote) “at that time” (unquote) in this sentence;
• adjective, as in (quote) “The then president of the club was a nice guy.” (unquote), where “then” means (quote) “existing” (unquote) in this sentence;
• noun, as in (quote) “We have not seen a show at the Alley Theatre since then.” (unquote), where “then” means (quote) “that time” (unquote) in this sentence.

What the phrase (quote) “no more frequent then usual” (unquote) requires is a preposition, given that the speaker is comparing (quote) “more frequent” (unquote) with (quote) “usual” (unquote).

The required preposition is “than” — spelled T-H-A-N, not T-H-E-N.

I believe that the common English blunder of using “then” where the preposition “than” is required is due in part to mispronunciation of the preposition “than”, but simple ignorance about these two words certainly could play a part, too.

Solution:
“… no more frequent than usual.”