Week 7 - Prepositions and Paragraphs

Prepositions

A preposition is a word that establishes a relationship, usually with the word following it. There are more than one hundred prepositions in English. A prepositional phrase is a phrase that begins with a preposition and is followed by a noun or pronoun. Such phrases function as either adjectives (modifying nouns) or as adverbs (modifying verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs).

Prepositions establish relationships of time, place, exception, addition, comparison or contrast, cause or effect, concession, condition, opposition, possession, movement.

Prepositions of time can be ‘on’, ‘at’, ‘in’, ‘during’, or ‘for’.

We use ‘on’ for specific days or dates, as in the sentence

‘my birthday is on Wednesday’.

‘At’ is used for specific times:

‘I have work at 9:30’.

We use ‘in’ to relate non-specific times, such as

‘my mother was born in 1946’.

And finally, we use ‘for’ to describe a continuous duration, as in the sentence

‘I studied for eighteen years’.

Prepositions of place can also be ‘on’, ‘at’, or ‘in’. The preposition ‘at’ is used for specific addresses, such as

‘I live at number one, Silk Street, London’.

‘On’ is used for names of streets, roads, et cetera, as in

‘I live on Silk Street’.

But we use ‘in’ to designate general areas, such as suburbs, towns, and countries, as in the sentence

‘I live in London’.

As you can see, the relationship of a preposition depends upon its context in a sentence.

Prepositions of movement include the words ‘to’, ‘toward’, or ‘towards’, such as in the sentences

‘I went to the castle gates’ and ‘don’t walk towards the light’.

Sometimes we don’t need to use prepositions to indicate movement.

For example, in the sentence ‘my sister went outside’, the preposition ‘outside’ functions as an adverb.

Prepositions often connect to nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

Consider the sentence ‘we found plenty of errors’. Here, the noun ‘plenty’ connects with the preposition ‘of’ and another noun, ‘errors’, to form a prepositional phrase.

In ‘I have no stomach for horror films’, the noun ‘stomach’ connects with the preposition ‘for’ and the compound noun ‘horror films’.

In ‘Sally is married to a wonderful partner’, the adjective ‘married’ combines with the preposition ‘to’. Likewise, ‘afraid’ and ‘of’ are combined in the sentence ‘I am afraid of the goblins’.

Now consider the sentences ‘Heidi ran up a big hill’ and ‘Heidi ran up a big bill’.

In the first sentence, ‘ran’ is a verb that connects to ‘up’, a preposition. ‘Ran’ agrees with the subject ‘Heidi’, while ‘hill’ is the object of ‘up’.

However, in the second sentence, ‘ran up’ is a phrasal verb agreeing with the subject ‘Heidi’. We covered phrasal verbs in week three. Remember that they are two- or three-word verbs that incorporate a main verb and a preposition.

When two words or phrases require the same preposition, that preposition doesn’t have to be repeated. This is called parallelism. For example, the sentence ‘I’m repulsed by and intrigued by that’ could be simply ‘I’m repulsed and intrigued by that’, because both ‘repulsed’ and ‘intrigued’ require the same preposition in ‘by’.

Similarly, to say ‘in Brisbane, you can wear t-shirts in summer or in winter’, could just as well read ‘in Brisbane, you can wear t-shirts in summer or winter’. Deciding which preposition to omit depends on whether it comes before or after its corresponding object. When words or phrases require different prepositions, you cannot omit either. Take these examples: ‘It is wise to listen to and learn from your lecturer’, and ‘would you like to swim in the pool or at the beach?’ None of these prepositions can be omitted as we neither ‘listen from’ our lecturer, nor ‘swim in’ the beach.

There can be idiomatic differences in the way that prepositions are used. Take, for example, the word ‘knack’, meaning the skill or ability to do something easily and well. You could have a knack ‘for’ remembering faces, a knack ‘of’ making people comfortable, or a knack ‘to’ using a corkscrew.

In each case, the preposition changes.

You must always be sure to use the correct preposition. Here are two examples of real-world publications that failed to do so. ‘Vogue Living’ magazine once printed:

‘American sculptor Nick Cave, not to be mistaken with our local rock star…’ where it should have read ‘mistaken for’.

Similarly, Brisbane City Council Customer Service posted this notice: ‘the current offer applies for free travel on QR and Brisbane Buses’, where they should have said ‘applies to’.

Mistakes like these discredit the authority that your writing might otherwise command. You might have heard the ‘rule’ that you should never end a sentence with a preposition. Of this, Winston Churchill allegedly said:

‘This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put’.

He was apparently responding to someone who was unaware that this is a ‘zombie rule’.

Ben Yagoda included the following example in his book that we listed in week one:

‘What did you want to bring the book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?’

Yagoda credits the sentence as coming out of Australia. Can you see how much fun it would have been to compose this sentence? How many prepositions does it end with?

On a final note, let’s have a look at another example.

Constance Hale, the author of ‘Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose’, writes that ‘nobody knows prepositional ins and outs like professor Morris Bishop’.

He penned this little poem in 1947 called ‘The Naughty Preposition’:

That’s it for prepositions.

Paragraphs

Now we’re going to look at paragraphs, and some of the ways that you can make your writing better by understanding how they work. Paragraphs are the blocks from which any piece of writing is built.

A paragraph usually comprises a series of sentences, all relating to a main idea or topic. More than anything else, a good paragraph is a unified paragraph, structured so that all of its parts share the same focus, tone, and point of view. Winston Churchill captured this concept when he said:

‘Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit on to one another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages’.

Churchill was an accomplished writer. Here, he emphasises the logical sequence that good paragraphs— and, indeed, all effective writing—should take:

‘A sentence expresses an idea; a paragraph does the same using several sentences; and a piece of writing does so too using several paragraphs’.

Paragraphs must be well planned and well structured. Most expository or analytical paragraphs begin with a topic sentence. This sentence states the central idea, claim, or problem that controls or guides the rest of the paragraph. In other words, it tells the reader what to expect.

The topic sentence is followed by the body of the paragraph. The body develops or discusses what the topic sentence has stated.

These sentences justify the main idea, providing evidence to support or explain that idea in greater detail.

This is where you, as the writer, might include data such as facts or statistics, testimonies, anecdotes, or descriptions. In the body of a paragraph, you can describe, examine, and analyse. The conclusion of a paragraph summarises what you have covered in the body of the paragraph, again in relation to the topic sentence. Good conclusions often also link to the next paragraph. This formula is by no means set in stone, and is generally applied to paragraphs in technical or academic writing, which argue, claim, and analyse.

Other forms of writing—for example, letters, narration, or prose—do not necessarily require conclusions, evidence, or even explicitly stated topic sentences.

The most important things to remember are that a paragraph should be unified, coherent, and adequately developed. I mean that a paragraph should stick to one idea or purpose, follow a logical sequence, and discuss the main idea fully and adequately.

Fowler stated that ‘the paragraph is essentially a unit of thought, not of length; it must be homogenous in subject matter and sequential in treatment’.

Some students learn that a paragraph must contain a certain number of sentences, but this is not a genuine or helpful rule. A paragraph should be as long as it needs to be. So, the length of a paragraph depends on its purpose. A complex idea might need a long paragraph to properly develop it, whereas a summary or a minor point of interest might need only a couple of short sentences.

In some styles of writing, such as newspaper writing, a paragraph might even consist of one sentence on its own.

But, it would be a sentence that tries to answer the five Ws and an H:

Who? What? Why? When? Where? and How?

When considering how long a paragraph should be, think of your reader.

A solid page of text is unattractive and overwhelming. Just as you may need to break up a long sentence to prevent over-reading, you may have to break up a paragraph so that the page will not seem over-crowded.

Paragraph breaks give your reader time to pause.

Remember that paragraphs are not like pictures; your audience can’t see what’s there all at once. They’ll see what you are saying as they read. For this reason, you should carefully organise what you are going to say, and consider the best sequence in which to convey it. For example, perhaps your argument could be neatly summarised in five points.

In this case, arrange those points so that they logically and clearly flow from one to the other. Use your topic sentence to let your reader know in brief what you are going to say.

This will make it easier for them to organise their thoughts as they read.

It’s helpful to give information first in broad terms, and to become more specific and offer greater detail as you move through the paragraph. There are no fixed rules about how to order information in paragraphs.

Any order that you choose will work, as long as what you have written is clear, relevant, and relates to both your topic and your reader.

Without cohesion, a paragraph is just a list of sentences. Cohesion means that everything ‘sticks together’.

While each sentence may be good in its own right, forming sentences into an effective paragraph means binding the sentences together. Cohesion is achieved through deliberate and effective punctuation, word choice, and sentence structure, using connecting words, relative pronouns, and repetition. Within a paragraph, when you are amplifying, elaborating, or reinforcing your message, you can use examples, cases, and lists.

You will need to use transitional expressions to move between the various parts. Here are some examples of transitional expressions.

They can contrast or qualify, continue, show cause and effect, exemplify, or summarise.

It would be helpful to keep the list of cohesive ties, and the list of potential transitional expressions, close by when you are writing.

Try to find examples of cohesive and coherent paragraphs to guide your own writing.