Most time I used spend on in the case like:
I spent 5 hours on learning Python everyday.
But, I happened to see a sentence: I spent a lot time in researching the problem. So I am curious about the difference between them?
Thanks in advance.
-
1See: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/124331/…– user 66974Commented Sep 23, 2019 at 15:17
-
1I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a duplicate of this question on ELL.– marcellothearcaneCommented Sep 23, 2019 at 16:07
-
1@marcellothearcane although ELL and EL&U are related, they are separate sites, independent of each other. The OP did not cross post because the older ELL post was written by a different user in 2017. I think we could keep this question here, without troubling anyone.– Mari-Lou ACommented Sep 23, 2019 at 17:18
-
2@Mari-LouA The thing is it was migrated from here, which I assume could happen to this one if the ELL post wasn't there (assuming we still migrate the same sorts of things that we did in 2017). I think I read somewhere that ELL wouldn't appreciate us migrating posts which have a duplicate, so I guess it's a lack-of-research thing. (It would be cool if search also included ELL results - maybe worth a meta post?)– marcellothearcaneCommented Sep 23, 2019 at 19:46
-
You could simply delete the preposition and avoid the problem altogether.– Jason BassfordCommented Sep 24, 2019 at 2:05
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Prepositions are necessary, of course, but overuse can make writing sound passive and fussy. For example, the U.S. government has a plain language mandate, and when they talk about omitting unnecessary words, they specifically call out prepositions as a potential problem, saying “Watch out for of, to, on, and other prepositions. They often mark phrases you can reduce to one or two words.”
I see both 'in' and 'on' as superfluous in these particular sentences. I'd suggest instead: "I spent 5 hours learning Python everyday." and "I spent a lot of time researching the problem."
-
2You omitted more prepositions than is correct. Your last sentence should be "I spent a lot of time researching the problem. Commented Sep 23, 2019 at 17:08