If your English teachers had the grammar books I did, your answer would likely be a resounding “No!” And, if you’re like me, you might get annoyed when, say, a character in a television show spews out, “What did you do that for?” instead of asking “Why?”
Why do we do that? Sometimes it’s ignorance of grammar rules or haste in grabbing words instead of trying to find the right ones. For instance:
“What has this come to?”instead of “How did this happen?”
As our culture becomes more diverse, maybe grammar no longer rules. Maybe bent rules snap as language changes and morphs with the times. For example:
“Turn the radio on.”
“Turn the sound down.”
“What are you after?”
“Where’s it at?”
“What’s the fuss about?”
“But we don’t want to go without.”
“Buzz off!”
“I give up!”
Before we actually give up (i.e. “quit”) this discussion, I wonder if your English teachers gave you the short, most common list of prepositions, such as on, off, up, down, to, for, with, about, or other examples given above, or if you got the bigger picture of what a preposition means in order to identify potential suspects. To define the word:
Prepositions show some type of relationship or movement between people, places, and/or things.
A quick Internet search will provide 100 possibilities, more or less! For example: more, less, under, beneath, above, through, away.
Over and out!
(c)2024, Poet-writer Mary Harwell Sayler actually has more problem with the misuse of pronouns than prepositions, but one of her sibs started this!
Mary Harwell Sayler 