5 Types of Prepositions: An Easy Guide

Main Takeaways:

• There are five types of prepositions in the English language.
• A preposition is a word that helps connect nouns and pronouns with a verb or adjective in a sentence.
• The five types of prepositions are simple, double, compound, participle, and phrase prepositions.
• Prepositional phrases contain a preposition plus a noun or pronoun.

There are five types of prepositions. They are simple, double, compound, participle, and phrase prepositions. A preposition is used to show a relationship between the noun, pronoun, or phrases in a sentence. They are used to connect people, objects, time, and locations.

What is a Preposition?

The definition of a preposition is a word or phrase that connects a noun or pronoun to a verb or adjective in a sentence. They are usually short words, and they normally are found in front of nouns. On rare occasions, prepositions can be found in front of gerund verbs.

If the subject, noun, and verb are the bricks of sentence, then prepositions are the mortar that connects them. They express position, movement, possession, time, and how an action is completed.

How Many Types of Prepositions are There?

There are five types of prepositions:

• Simple preposition
• Double preposition
• Compound preposition
• Participle preposition
• Phrase preposition

These are spoken and written quite often in English. In fact, many of us use all types of prepositions naturally without realizing that they are distinct and have a name.

What are the Most Common Prepositions?

The Top 10 most common prepositions in the English language are: of, with, at, from, into, during, including, until, against. These represent the most frequently used prepositions. They are also called “simple prepositions.”

What is a Simple Type of Preposition?

Simple prepositions are the short words used to show the relationship between nouns, pronouns, or to join parts of a clause or sentence. 

List of Simple Prepositions

Here are some of the most common, or simple prepositions:

Examples of Simple Prepositions Used in Sentences

Car is the object of the preposition out.

Upon is the preposition. Tin Man is the object.

Homework is the object and the preposition is without.

What are Prepositions of Place?

Writers use this type of preposition to describe where something is located. There are four Prepositions of Place. “At” describes a specific point in space. “In” describes an enclosed space. “On” describes an object’s relationship to a surface. “By” describes an object’s proximity to something else.

Prepositions of Place Examples

“At”

“In”

“On”

“By”

Prepositions of Direction

If you ask “Where?”, this type of preposition is usually part of the answer. Prepositions of Direction let you know where something is going. They indicate which direction something is moving. There are dozens of examples, but the most common examples of Prepositions of Direction are:

What is a Double Preposition?

Easily form a Double Prepositions by joining two simple prepositions.

Examples of Double Prepositions in Sentences

What is a Compound Preposition?

Double prepositions and compound prepositions are very similar. Both are two-word phrases. The double preposition is formed through the conjunction of two simple prepositions. Whereas the compound preposition is formed through the conjunction of a non-prepositional word and a simple preposition.

I use INK which is a web content optimization editor. It identifies wordy or complex sentences and suggests that I edit to make my articles easily digestible.

This sentence can be simplified to:

Then, I didn’t know the answer.

or

I didn’t know the answer.

The Most Common Compound Prepositions

Participle Prepositions

Participle prepositions have endings such as -ed and -ing.

Prepositional Phrase Example Sentences

How do you Identify a Prepositional Phrase?

A prepositional phrase is a group of words that doesn’t contain a verb or a subject. It functions as a unified part of speech. A prepositional phrase normally has a simple preposition and a noun or a simple preposition and a pronoun.

You can jazz up your hamburger by adding cheese, grilled onions, mustard, tomatoes, etc. The same can be done for prepositional phrases. Add adverbs and adjectives to make your sentence more enjoyable to read.

Prepositional Phrase Examples

Prepositional phrases contain a preposition followed by an article followed by a noun.

Let’s spice up this sentence.

Next, we add more details.

Adjectives make the sentence more enticing to read.

Adding a number adjective makes the sentence for informative.

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