Prepositions

“… no more frequent then usual.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Prepositions

I heard this recently during a radio broadcast.

Problem:
The word “then” is not a preposition.

Explanation:
The radio broadcaster said a sentence such as “The telephone calls to the radio station during this hour were no more frequent then usual.”

The problem with this sentence is that the word “then” — spelled T-H-E-N — is not a preposition.

Instead, this word is any of the following:

  • adverb, as in “Prices were higher then.”, where “then” means “at that time” in this sentence;
  • adjective, as in “The then president of the club was a nice guy.”, where “then” means “existing” in this sentence;
  • noun, as in “We have not seen a show at the Alley Theatre since then.”, where “then” means “that time” in this sentence.

What the phrase “no more frequent then usual” requires is a preposition, given that the speaker is comparing “more frequent” with “usual”.

The required preposition is “than” — spelled T-H-A-N, not T-H-E-N.

I believe that the common English blunder of using “then” where the preposition “than” is required is due in part to mispronunciation of the preposition “than”, but simple ignorance about these two words certainly could play a part, too.

Solution:
“… no more frequent than usual.”

“Please forward that on to him.”

Prepositions, Redundancies

I heard this yesterday in a conference call.

Problem:
The word “on” does not belong in the sentence.

Explanation:
Someone was asking the conference-call facilitator to forward an email message to someone who was not attending the call. He said, “Please forward that on to him.”

One of the definitions of the preposition “on” is in the direction of, as in “to travel on a northerly course”.

This definition also is the primary definition of the preposition “to”.

Therefore, the preposition “on” did not belong in the conference-call attendee’s sentence.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “forward that to” — 71,600 matches
  • “forward that on to” — 26,100 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the expression correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 2.74-to-1, which is dreadful.

Solution:
“Please forward that to him.”

“… it was passed 3:00 pm …”

Prepositions, Verbs

I saw this in an email message this morning.

Problem:
The writer used a past participle where a preposition was required.

Explanation:
The word “passed” — spelled P-A-S-S-E-D — in the expression “it was passed 3:00 pm” is the past participle of the verb “pass”.

The message writer was trying to say in the complete sentence that the time was after 3:00 p.m. when someone saw something.

The word “after” in this context is a preposition.

In other words, the message writer should have used a preposition instead of a past participle, and this preposition should sound like “passed” — spelled P-A-S-S-E-D — and act as a synonym for the preposition “after”.

This gives us the solution. The writer should have used the preposition “past” — spelled P-A-S-T — which means beyond in time.

Solution:
“… it was past 3:00 pm …”