English Grammar Rules

When people study a language, many of them think of it as a confusing and arbitrary set of rules that have to be followed in order to produce results. However, English grammar rules are not the same as the arcane formulae of calculus. In many cases, English grammar rules are fairly simple, and it is only in the most complex forms of expression that things start to get a little confusing. However, there is one set of English grammar rules that seems to confuse many speakers, both native and speakers for whom English is a second language. What is that problem, you may ask? The smallest parts of the sentence: prepositions.

Prepositions are the little words that tell you where things are going or the direction they are headed. Words like “in,” “on,” and “around,” follow complicated English grammar rules that stem from traditional usage and metaphor more than logic. For example, a person can be “in” debt but “on” a winning streak, while an idea can pass “over” my head while centering “on” an issue. Such word choices are somewhat confusing because they seem entirely arbitrary. In some cases, they represent imaginary actions (like an idea flying above a person’s skull), but in many cases they are simply traditional. Understanding these English grammar rules takes practice, and it requires some memorization to get down some of the more illogical English idioms.

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