I look at prepositions for the latest in my posts on grammar.

What have the prepositions ever done for us?

You are writing a sentence with a subject (I) and an object (you) and you’ve something you want to pass between them (a ball): how do you get the ball from subject to object? A verb supplies the motion (throw), but does it do enough?

You could say I throw you the ball, but in order to tell the story accurately we need prepositions. See object of preposition. I throw the ball to you. I throw the ball at you. I throw the ball with you. I throw the ball around you. I throw the ball after you. I throw the ball despite you.

Each of these examples offers different information about how the ball passes from I to you, often using tiny words to demonstrate complex ideas of intent, levels of success or degrees of abstraction.

On the one hand, they are very efficient parts of speech, but on the other, they can leave some area for misunderstanding and are notoriously difficult to translate from one language to another: what English speakers do by hand, for example, Spanish speakers do to hand (a mano).

If more information is required, prepositions will often be used to form a prepositional phrase, in which the word is joined to the prepositional object (or complement) together with as many modifiers as desired.

In the sentence, I throw the ball through the round, stained-glass window, the prepositional phrase through the round, stained-glass window contains a preposition (through), an object (window) and some modifiers (the, round, stained-glass).

The preposition almost always comes before the complement, with a few exceptions (ago is one), which is why it is called a pre-position. For more information, see is with a preposition and preposition of place.

Common prepositional problems

There are a couple of misconceptions about prepositions. A big one is that prepositions cannot be used to end a sentence (see ending a sentence with a preposition).

This is the result of an attempt by overzealous linguists in the seventeenth century to try and make English grammar rules more similar to those of Latin. Stranded or dangling prepositions, as they are known, have been used in English since the earliest times, and there has never been a rule to say they should not appear.

So, nothing to worry about. (Even if your computer’s grammar checker suggests otherwise.) In addition, the same words can sometimes be used, but not as prepositions – because there is no complement.

For example, you tell someone to Put that ice cream down!, but down is not a preposition because it does not refer to an object. However, Put that ice cream on the table! contains on as a preposition because it links ice cream to table.

For more information, see these examples of prepositions and this list of prepositions. You can even learn through this preposition song.