{"id":331,"date":"2022-07-11T00:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T00:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wordvice.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2022-11-15T00:18:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T00:18:13","slug":"improve-writing-eliminate-prepositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordvice.com\/blog\/improve-writing-eliminate-prepositions\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Improve Your Writing: Eliminate Prepositions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As we continue our series on reducing wordiness and improving your writing, we will shift our focus to the dreadful prepositions that plague everyone! For many of you reading our posts, English is a second language, and we can imagine how much you despise memorizing prepositional phrases. Well, we’ve got a bit of good news for you! One of the best ways to reduce word count and tighten your sentences is ELIMINATING prepositions<\/strong>. Yup, that’s right. You can skip these horrid parts of speech and save yourself the headache of trying to figure out if the right phrase includes “on” or “of!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip # 2:  Eliminating Prepositional Phrases<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let’s look at the following examples:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
  1. The blood pressure of the mice was elevated.<\/li>
  2. The elephant teetered along the edge of the cliff.<\/li>
  3. The focus of this project was to study the effects of increased global temperatures on local fish hatcheries.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    What’s wrong with the above sentences? Grammatically, they’re correct. But they’re super wordy, aren’t they? In each phrase, we can eliminate prepositions to shorten them.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
    1. The blood pressure of <\/span>the mice was elevated. [8 words]<\/li>
    2. The elephant teetered along the edge of <\/span>the cliff. [9 words]<\/li>
    3. The focus of <\/span>this project was to study the effects of <\/span>increased global temperatures on <\/span>local fish hatcheries. [19 words]<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Above, we highlighted the prepositions we can delete in red.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
      1. The mice’s<\/span> blood pressure was elevated. [6 words]<\/li>
      2. The elephant teetered along the cliff’s <\/span>edge. [7 words]<\/li>
      3. This project examined how<\/span> increased global temperatures affect local fish hatcheries. [11 words]<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        As in the examples above, you could shorten your word count by two words for each prepositional phrase you eliminate. Imagine a page filled with prepositional phrases like the ones above. That’s a lot of words you could delete!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        There are many scenarios in which prepositions can be omitted. You saw a few of these cases above. Another situation is one you learned recently in our article on eliminating nominalizations<\/a>. If you may recall, nominalizations often create passive voice structures!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        For those of you wanting to learn how to avoid or replace prepositional phrases,  the following is a list of common situations in which you should revise prepositional phrases and how you can do so<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        1)<\/strong> Be possessive<\/strong>: In many situations where there is a close connection, like a possessive relationship between two nouns, you can eliminate the preposition. For example, if you have “Noun1 of Noun 2,” or “Location1 in Location2,” take the second noun and move it before the first noun and add an apostrophe to create a possessive form for the second noun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n