PREPOSITION PATROL
I
was going to write about using a 27 chapter outline to plot your work for this post, but will
leave that for another time.
Once
we’ve completed our draft MS it needs to
be edited on several different
levels. Spelling, punctuation and grammar obviously come top of the list but there are other things that need to be considered. Overuse of
prepositions is one of them.
For the past few days I’ve been on ‘preposition patrol.’ This entailed
going through my work and
highlighting every preposition I’d used to
see which could be culled. Words like
up and down are the obvious ones and it’s amazing how often they appear.
Sometimes the use of these words is
valid but quite often they can be
cut out.
Recognising
a verb or a noun when you see it is fairly obvious. But, instantly recognising that a word like despite is a preposition
eludes most people. A word like but can also be off putting as it is usually thought of as a conjunction. So too with
the word like, which can also be a
noun, an adjective, an adverb or even a conjunction depending on how it is being used. Making a list
can help and after a few pages
highlighting these words you won’t even look at it.
Words
to look out for when you go on preposition patrol are: about,
above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below,
beneath, beside, between, beyond, but, by, despite, down, during, except, for,
from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, outside, over, past,
since, through, throughout, till, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up,
upon, with, within, without.
Analysing
what you have written on a sentence
level like this can even highlight things
you’re not even looking for. It might
be something as simple as a word choice you’ve made or even how you’ve phrased
a complete sentence.
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