A preposition is a connector word that places an object in relationship to the rest of a sentence. In revision, clusters of prepositions and prepositional phrases often signal a bulky sentence carrying too many ideas. Use them as clues, not as errors to eliminate automatically. section 5.3.2
Use the preposition check to tighten an important sentence:
- Test a suspected word with “[the_word] my desk” or “[the_word] the meeting.” If the phrase works, the word is probably a preposition. section 5.3.2
- Find the prepositions in the target sentence or paragraph and bold them. Guessing is sufficient; perfect grammatical accuracy is unnecessary. section 5.3.2
- Look for clusters. They may reveal that one sentence is carrying several ideas, burying its main point, or adding monotonous dead weight. section 5.3.2
- Apply the strategy selectively to prominent or important sentences, such as an introduction or findings paragraph, rather than every sentence. section 5.3.2 section 5.7
Turn a preposition-heavy sentence into a direct one
Before: “In the end, it was decided that the best solution was implementing it by means of a link to an existing Rust implementation.” After: “Ultimately, we implemented that encryption layer by linking to RustyEncryption.” The revision removes a stack of prepositional phrasing and states the action directly.
