Prepositions are words or phrases used to express temporal or dimensional relations to another word. Generally, they usually come before a noun or pronoun, and they are important markers in ensuring the structural integrity of a sentence. Sometimes, it can get challenging to identify and correct preposition mistakes in your sentences, especially if you don’t speak English as your first language. To help you, our prepositional phrase finder online tool can assist in finding preposition-related mistakes in your sentences and suggest the most appropriate suggestions. As such, you are left with high-quality, accurate, and coherent sentences.
Different Types of Proposition
Depending on the different functions and uses of prepositions, they can be profiled into four main categories. They are as follows:
Prepositions of time
These types of prepositions are used to show when something is happening.
For example:
We will be traveling on Friday.
The school will be closed from 7 a.m to 5 p.m.
Prepositions of place
They are used to indicate the position of something.
For example:
I have left the car I borrowed from her in the garage.
Mary hid inside the bin.
Prepositions of direction
They are used to explain the direction in which something moves or travels.
For example:
The boy ran toward his mother the moment he saw him.
Kim jumped into the pool to help his brother.
Prepositions of location
They are used to denote the location of an object.
For example:
I will be staying at my cousin’s house for the weekend.
She laid on the floor for a really long time.
Common Prepositional Phrases Errors and How To Fix Them
Given the expansive list of rules governing prepositional phrases, it can be challenging to determine what to use where. In this section, we are going to look at the common prepositional phrase mistakes that people tend to make and how you can avoid them. They include:
The Object of a Preposition Misuse
The prepositional object in a sentence is the noun or pronoun that the preposition describes or affects. One of the most common mistakes among writers is to forget about the position of the prepositional object as it can affect either the noun or pronoun.
For example:
Incorrect: Who should I gift this car to?
Correct: Whom should I gift this car to?
Wrong Preposition Use
Another common mistake is the wrong use of ‘In’ and “Into’ preposition phrases.
For example:
She fell in the river.
She fell into the river.
Redundant Preposition Use
For example:
Incorrect: I don’t remember of coming across it.
Correct: I don’t remember coming across it.
Misplacement of Prepositional Phrases
For example:
Incorrect: Where are you going to?
Correct: Where are you going?
Prepositional Phrases Misspelling
When it comes to English writing ‘‘until,’’ ‘‘across,’’ and ‘’till’’ are the most commonly misspelled prepositional phrases. For example, “across” is misspelled with two c’s. Till and until, on the other hand, may have the same meaning, but till they aren’t spelled the same.
Whether you are fairly well-versed with the English language or speak it as your second language, our prepositional phrase sentence checker can help identify and correct all the above mistakes. But that’s not the best part; our checker is equipped with auxiliary features that can help catch other grammar-related mistakes as highlighted below.
Auxiliary Features of Our
Prepositional Phrase Checker
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Grammar and spelling checker
The English language is governed by many unique rules, some of which are super-hard to master. Our compound prepositional phrase checker will crawl through your texts, analyze them, pick nuanced grammar mistakes, and offer the most appropriate suggestion. It will also correct misspelled and misused words, so you don’t have to worry about handing in or publishing texts that are littered with spelling errors.
Punctuation checker
When is it ideal to use a comma? Does a semicolon belong there? What is a comma splice? These are some of the questions that you may have to contend with when dealing with punctuation rules. Luckily for you, our prepositional phrase identifier online doubles as a punctuation checker, helping you identify and correct all punctuation-related mistakes in your writing. Rather than manually combing your work, you can save brainpower, and instead, focus on articulating your ideas.
Tone checker
The author’s attitude is reflected in their tone of writing. And for you to achieve the correct tone in your writing, you need to use the right words to reach the reader, whether humorous or restrained. By analyzing your grammar, phrasing, word choice, punctuation, and even capitalization, our prepositional phrase finder calculator can identify the tone of your texts before you hit the send or publish button.
Plagiarism checker
Our prepositional phrase corrector also crawls through texts and analyzes sentences where authorship is not properly attributed and accidental plagiarism. After that, it produces a comprehensive plagiarism report and score, letting you correct it in advance.
How Does Our Prepositional Phrase Finder Work?
Using our prepositional phrase identifier to improve the quality of your texts is a fairly simple process. Just follow these easy steps.
- Visit our website.
- Copy/paste your work into the blank editor. Alternatively, you can type directly on the prepositional phrase finder tool.
- Click the ‘Check’ button and wait for the tool to analyze your texts.
- After a few seconds, the prepositional phrase finder app will generate a comprehensive report, highlight all the mistakes, and offer the most appropriate suggestions.
- Accept the suggestions by clicking on the suggested correction.
- Once done, you can also check your work for accidental plagiarism by clicking on the “Check Plagiarism” button.
Top Rules of Selecting the Right Prepositional Phrases
There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of prepositions in the English language. This not only makes it tricky to accurately choose the correct ones to use in your writing but also where to use them. One of the easiest ways to remember prepositions is that they are words or phrases that tell everywhere a person can run. For example, a girl can run (up, down, far, near, by, around, at, always, and close.)
In this section, we have curated a few important rules to help you choose the appropriate prepositions. And luckily for you, our prepositional phrase finder in a sentence can help you implement all of them. They include but are not limited to the following:
Pair Prepositions Properly
Determining the prepositions to use in your writing can be tricky, especially when dealing with idioms. In the English language, idioms are expressions that contain a figurative meaning different from the word’s or phrase’s literal meaning. Below are examples of idioms, coupled with their correct prepositions.
For example:
Mary would love to attend the party.
You can achieve anything you set your mind to.
I was feeling under the weather.
Take the third sentence, for example, “under the weather,” doesn’t literally mean you’re standing underneath the rain. Instead, it is an idiom that is universally used to mean ill or sick.
Carefully Consider What Follows Prepositions
Another tip to help you determine whether or not prepositions are used correctly is their positioning in a sentence. As a general rule of thumb, prepositions must always be followed by a noun or pronoun in a sentence, also commonly referred to as the object of the preposition. Important to note, however, that a verb can never be the object of a preposition.
For example:
The banana was for the monkey.
The banana was for walking.
This sentence is correct because the preposition “for” is followed by the noun “monkey.”
The second sentence is incorrect because the preposition “for” is succeeded by the verb “walked.”
Avoid Placing Prepositions at the End of the Sentence
As mentioned above, prepositions must have an object and always be followed by a noun. As such, you should try and avoid placing them at the end of a sentence.
For example:
Incorrect: The couch is where I put my phone on.
Correct: I put my phone on the couch.
With that said, however, there are special circumstances where you can end a sentence with a preposition. This is especially the case when the preposition is not extraneous and omitting it would alter the meaning of the sentence.
In the example above, omitting the preposition “on ” does not alter the sentence’s meaning in any way. For this reason, the proposition was unnecessary. Below is a sentence example where it’s perfectly okay to end a sentence with a preposition.
For example:
I turned the radio on.
As you can see, removing “on” from this sentence would change its entire meaning. Essentially, you will be implying that you turned the radio itself. Alternatively, you can rewrite the sentence as follows:
“I turned on the radio.”
Don’t Mistake “In” For “Into” and Vice Versa
If you are looking to express motion towards something, the most appropriate phrase to use is “into.” If you want to indicate a location, however, you need to use “in”. Here are some examples:
I swam in the river. (Indicating location)
I walked into the house. (Expressing motion)
Avoid Interchanging “Than” and “From”
Although more of a suggestion than a cast-in-stone rule, always try to avoid the following when dealing with the word “different.”
She looks different than her father.
Instead, opt for:
She looks different from her father.
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