English Prepositions

Check out some good books for prepositional phrases:

Here are three examples of prepositional phrases:

• I found the sock under the bed.
• She stood by the river and wept.
• Jane walked slowly towards the house.

A prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition (e.g. as in, on, under, with, etc.) and ends with its object. The object is often accompanied by modifiers that describe it.

Example: She stood under the shade.

Ellipsis is an English punctuation mark with the symbol “.”. An ellipsis is three evenly spaced dots, which indicates an incomplete thought or omission of some words. These three dots show that the sentence has been left incomplete deliberately.

For example: I am not sure what to do … I think we should take a break.

Some punctuations are categorized as end punctuations. The end punctuations are:

• Periods (.) – It is used to mark an end to the sentences.
• Question marks (? ) – It is used to end the sentence to indicate a query or direct question.
• Exclamation marks (!) – It is used to end the sentence to indicate emphasis or strong emotions.

One of the most important rules, or the golden rule, for the use of prepositions in a sentence is that it is followed by a noun and not by a verb. English Verbs never follow prepositions.

For Example: Rohan put the seeds into the plant.

Here, into preposition is followed by the noun- plant.

There are several prepositions in English. However, have a look at the commonly used top 10 prepositions in English: 

1. In
2. On
3. At
4. For
5. With
6. By
7. To
8. From
9. Into
10. About

There are certain cases in which articles are generally omitted. In total, there are about ten such scenarios where we do not use any article in front of certain words. Some of these exceptions are as follows:

• When talking about abstract nouns (uncountable nouns) used in a generic sense
• Before plural nouns used in a general sense
• In front of most of the proper nouns, such as names, places, countries, continents, etc.
• Before the name of meals.

Grammatically, in home and at home are correct. However, their usage varies in terms of context. The use of 'at home' shows something or someone is located in the home. However, 'in home' describes something that happens in the home. For more clarity, have a look at the examples below:

• At home: I left the keys at home.
• In home: The keys are placed over the refrigerator in home.