Ubiquitous Prepositions

Commonly Confused Prepositions at a Glance

SN	Preposition	With Reference to Time	Example
1	In	Used before Very long and short times	In the 3rd millennium
2			In the middle ages
3			In the 17th century
4			In the 1990s/1960s/2019
5			In the Summer
6			In July/December
7			In a week/forthnight
8			In the morning/evening/afternoon
9	On	Used before short times like days, dates and one day festivals or ceremonies	On 14th February
10			On my birthday
11			On his wedding ceremony
12			On 24th October 1946
13			On Teej
14			On Rakshya Bhandhan/Rakhi
15			On Maha Nawami
16			On Christmas
17			On Halloween’s Night
18			On Easter
19	At	Used before very short times like exact hours of the days, meal times and event times Also festivals and ceremonies involving more than one day	At 7:30 pm
20			At  midday
21			At midnight
22			At noon
23			At breakfast/lunch/dinner
24			At Christmas
25			At Durga Puja/Dushera/Dashain
26			At the Match
27			At the Party
SN	Preposition	With Reference to Means of Transport	Example
28	By	Used before all means of transportation without any determiners before them By + all small/big vehicles By + all public/private vehicles	By bus
29			By taxi
30			By motorbike
32			By  train
33			By plane
34			By ship
34			By cart/ auto rickshaw
35	On	Used before all big vehicles like bus, train, plane, ship, lorry, two wheelers etc. with a determiner before them	On the bus
36			On the ship
37			On the plane/flight
38			On his bike
39			On the lorry
40			On the spaceship
41			On the train
42			On my uncle’s motorcycle
43	In	Used before all small vehicles like car, taxi, van, micro van, convertible, etc. with a determiner in front of them [Determiners: a, an, the, his, my, our, her, my father’s, my uncle’s, etc.]	In my car
44			In a taxi
45			In a micro van
46			In my friend’ car
47			In a taxi

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