{"id":5503,"date":"2017-05-21T12:03:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T12:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/21\/dropping-prepositions\/"},"modified":"2017-05-21T12:03:29","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T12:03:29","slug":"dropping-prepositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/21\/dropping-prepositions\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropping Prepositions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems to be acceptable in British English, as witness<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Donald Trump received a glittering welcome from leaders in Saudi Arabia<\/a> on the first day of his first international tour, as the two countries agreed a series of military deals worth nearly $110bn (\u00a385bn).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That offends my linguistic sensibilities. If I were editor, I would expend some red ink. One does not agree X, one agrees to<\/em> X, or upon<\/em> X.  If you make a proposal, I may reject it, but if I agree, I agree to<\/em> it; I don't agree it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stateside one often hears sentences like 'She will graduate high school in June.'  The meaning is clear, but the style is bad. One graduates from<\/em> high school.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am just reporting on how I prefer to write and speak. But if a competent<\/em> user of English reports on how he prefers to write and speak, then the report has normative import.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Lousy Linguist has more data<\/a> on British English if this topic is of interest. And even if it isn't.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

An equal but opposite stylistic infelicity is the adding of unnecessary prepositions. For example, 'Where's your car at<\/em>?' instead of 'Where's your car?'<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems to be acceptable in British English, as witness: Donald Trump received a glittering welcome from leaders in Saudi Arabia on the first day of his first international tour, as the two countries agreed a series of military deals worth nearly $110bn (\u00a385bn). That offends my linguistic sensibilities. If I were editor, I would … Continue reading “Dropping Prepositions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}