Ory's writing notes: Prepositions part 1.

Prepositions! I love this part of speech because it can be used to create a sense of kinetic motion within a sentence. At the end of my notes on prepositions, I will show how this effect can be created.

Prepositions are words that show a relationship between another word and the object of the preposition. (Sounds confusing doesn't it?) They often use phrases (we will get heavier into phrases later) to accomplish this.

Example: The gun on the shelf is mine. ('On' is the preposition. 'The self' is the object of the preposition. The prepositional phrase is used to describe the gun.)

There are a lot of prepositions out there (top, down, in, out, after, before etc) but they all fall into one of four categories: Time, Direction, Manner, and Place.

Time: After the game,
Direction: Down the wall,
Manner: On his back,
Place: Inside the closest.

Sometimes you need more than one preposition to describe what is going on.

Example: On top of the stairs. (The first three words are all prepositions.)

Sometimes you need two objects to describe what is going on.

Example: Between Max and David. (Max and David are the objects of the preposition.)

Now, if a preposition does not have an object, it is an Adverb.

Example: David danced across. (Adverb)

Example: David danced across the room. (Preposition)

Now Prepositional phrases can be used as an Adjective, adverb, or noun.

Adjective: The book on top of the table is mine.
Adverb: He ran across the room.
Noun (This is somewhat rare): Next year will be great!

In part 2 we will look at some problems that sometimes occur with prepositions and cool things you can do with them (and you can do a lot of cool things with them).