For instance, over email I often write something along the lines of the following:
I'll arrive at 221B Baker Street at 11:45 PM.
Is this grammatically correct? Can any improvements be made from a stylistic standpoint?
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1What rule would make it not grammatically correct? As to style, that would depend on the larger context.– Hot LicksAug 5, 2016 at 18:03
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It may depend on whether the dog barks. I'll arrive at 221B Baker Street at 11:45PM at the same time as Dr Watson or at least that's what he said when I saw him at the club.– deadratAug 5, 2016 at 18:53
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1@Deadrat: I take it you'd have mentioned if you were at dinner at the club, so I suppose you were out on the razz again! :)– FumbleFingersAug 5, 2016 at 19:01
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1@FumbleFingers What's the point of english.stackexchange.com if you have to research the answer to your question before asking it? English is my first language, so I didn't think it appropriate (or obvious) to post on the English Language Learners site.– splicerAug 9, 2016 at 22:54
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1@splicer: Google Books claims 63,800 results for at the station at, the vast majority of which will match your context. As deadrat's two comments indicate, it's perfectly possible to chain together prepositional clauses almost indefinitely. Even if they keep using the same preposition. I don't know why you dislike such constructions, but obviously others have no problem with them, and it's unthinkable that there could be a rule against them. (It would be even more mocked than the one about not splitting an infinitive! :)– FumbleFingersAug 9, 2016 at 23:20
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1 Answer
As the other answer says, it's grammatically sound. It's hard not to repeat "at"s here, but if you wanted to you could say something like:
"I'll reach 221B Baker Street at 11:45 AM."
"I'll make it to 221B Baker Street at 11:45 AM."
"I'll be at 221B Baker Street by 11:45 AM."
But none of those are necessarily improvements. Stylistically, I think yours is fine.
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I'm not the downvoter, but... 13 hours after it was posted, this question is on the verge of being closed as off-topic for lack of research by the poster—an excuse for closing that close-voters often use when a question strikes them as being too simple and having too obvious an answer to merit inclusion on the site. When someone answers such a question, there is a possibility that the question will stick—or at least be harder to delete—so (I suspect) people sometimes downvote the answer to make that outcome less likely and to discourage people from answering similar questions in future. ... Aug 6, 2016 at 7:12
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...I'm not condoning this practice; I'm just saying that you may be on the receiving end of it in this case. It's also possible, however, that the downvoter felt that your answer lacked reference-work support and was therefore "not useful," or even that the downvoter disagreed with your analysis and conclusion. We can't know for sure because the downvoter hit and ran without explanation. Aug 6, 2016 at 7:15
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@SvenYargs haha thanks. I see that this forum seems to differ from the writing stack most principally in that lots of sources are cited. I'll come up with a quote next time. Thanks again! Aug 7, 2016 at 16:09