An Introduction To Prepositions In English

Prepositions are another type of word you will find being commonly used in English sentences. These are often seen as small and boring, but they do make a difference and actually give you a lot of detail within the sentence.

So let’s look at what they are and how they work.

What Are Prepositions?

The main goal of a preposition is to tell you how a noun relates to the other things within the sentence.

They add context, usually by giving you more detail about time, location/space or direction and other things like this.

They are usually placed before the noun, and are words like:  to, at, under, on, in, of, by

Annoyingly some of these words can have several different meanings, which can make things seem more complex than they really are. Really it comes down to context and when you look at the whole sentence things are not usually too confusing.

Prepositions Related To Time

Here are some common time related prepositions:

after, from, ago, at, before, by, for, in, on, until

Prepositions Related To Location/Space

Here are some common location/space prepositions:

above, below, under, behind, in front of, between, on, over, to, in

Prepositions Of Direction

Here are some common direction related prepositions:

over, under, into, onto, above, below, around, through, on to, in to, over, up, down

As you can see, some of these are the same for each category and really it depends on the sentence to what exact meaning is.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see these prepositions are pretty straightforward, they just sit before the noun and give you a bit more information about them.

Look out for them, you will notice they are very common and very useful.

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