Prepositions

“… where it has a scar at now.”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions

I heard this today on a talk-radio show about gardening.

Problem:
The preposition should not appear in this expression.

Explanation:
The caller who said this was describing a location on her tree to the gardening-show host.

That point on the tree had a scar.

The caller made the common English blunder of applying “where at” — a mistaken way to use “where” — to the location of the tree’s scar.

What’s ironic is that the lady probably thought that “at” helped to clarify or emphasize “where” but instead confused many listeners because “scar at” ran together as “scarrat” — resulting in “… where it has a scarrat now” — leaving us wondering what a “scarrat” was.

Solution:
“… where it has a scar now.”

“I saw him on yesterday.”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Prepositions

I hear this type of grammatical error too frequently.

Problem:
As I have written about “today” and “tomorrow” (both adverbs), “yesterday” is an adverb, so preceding it with the preposition “on” is incorrect.

Explanation:
“Yesterday” already tells you when.

For example, the answer to “When did they start to paint the house?” could be “They started to paint the house yesterday.”

In contrast, “Tuesday” is a proper noun, not an adverb, so the answer to “When did they start to paint the house?” could be “They started to paint the house on Tuesday.”

In other words, the days of the week, which are proper nouns, require the “on” preposition to tell you when, whereas “yesterday” already tells you when.

Solution:
“I saw him yesterday.”