Prepositions & Articles

Snapshot

• Prepositions are small words (in, on, at, by, for, with, of, to, from…) that link a noun/pronoun to the rest of the sentence, showing relationships of place, time, direction and manner. CUET tests them through gap-fills and error-spotting.
• They are hard because they are idiomatic — there is little logic to good at, married to, afraid of; they must be learned as fixed pairings. But the time and place prepositions (in/on/at) do follow clear patterns.
• The reliable approach is to learn the in/on/at rules for time and place, then memorise the verb/adjective + preposition collocations as fixed units.
• Exam reality: +5 / −1. Choose the preposition the structure demands; the "obvious" one is often the trap.

Part 1 — IN / ON / AT for TIME

Pattern to remember: at = smallest/point in time, on = a specific day, in = a longer period. Exceptions to learn: at night but in the night/morning/evening; at the weekend (British).

Part 2 — IN / ON / AT for PLACE

Same logic: at = point, on = surface, in = inside a space. So "at the station" (point), "on the platform" (surface), "in the train" (enclosed).

Part 3 — Direction & movement

• to — movement towards: go to school.
• into / out of — entering / leaving: jump into the pool, walk out of the room.
• onto / off — onto a surface / away from it: climb onto the roof, fall off the ladder.
• through / across / along / over / under — through the tunnel, across the road, along the river, over the bridge, under the table.
• from … to — start and end: from Delhi to Agra.
• towards — in the direction of (not necessarily reaching): walked towards the gate.

Part 4 — Fixed verb + preposition (memorise as units)

Part 5 — Fixed adjective + preposition

Part 6 — Worked examples

1. "She is good ___ painting." → at.
2. "We met ___ Monday ___ 9 a.m." → on / at.
3. "He was born ___ 2008." → in.
4. "The keys are ___ the table." → on.
5. "I am afraid ___ snakes." → of.
6. "They live ___ Mumbai." → in.
7. "He died ___ malaria." → of.
8. "This is different ___ that." → from.
9. "The bus stops ___ the corner." → at.
10. "She insisted ___ paying." → on.

Part 7 — Common traps

• Different from, not different than (formal).
• Superior/inferior to, not than.
• Married to, not married with.
• Discuss / enter / marry take no preposition — "discuss the issue" (not discuss about), "enter the room" (not enter into, except idiomatically "enter into a contract").
• In time (not late) vs on time (punctual) — different meanings.
• At the end (point in time/place) vs in the end (finally).

Part 8 — Why prepositions reward pattern + memory together

Prepositions sit at an awkward border between rule and habit. The time and place uses (Parts 1–2) genuinely follow a pattern — point, surface, enclosure — and once you internalise "at = point, on = surface, in = inside", you can place most everyday phrases correctly by reasoning. But the verb + preposition and adjective + preposition pairings (Parts 4–5) follow almost no logic: there is no reason good at but bad at yet afraid of; these are simply the fixed shapes English has settled on, and they must be memorised as whole units, never assembled from logic. The most efficient study, then, splits the work: reason out the spatial/temporal ones, rote-learn the collocations. A powerful memory trick is to learn each collocation inside a short, vivid sentence — "I depend on my alarm", "she is fond of mangoes" — because the sentence stores the pairing far better than an isolated pair. Finally, beware the trap words discuss, enter, marry, resemble, reach which take no preposition in standard use; the exam loves to insert a tempting about, into, with after them. Spot these, and a whole class of questions becomes free marks.

Part 9 — Rapid-fire practice (choose the preposition)

1. "He has been ill ___ Monday." → since.
2. "The shop is open ___ 9 a.m. ___ 6 p.m." → from … to.
3. "She is senior ___ all of us." → to.
4. "I congratulated him ___ his success." → on.
5. "The book consists ___ ten chapters." → of.
6. "They were accused ___ cheating." → of.
7. "He jumped ___ the river." → into.
8. "We walked ___ the bridge." → over / across.
9. "She is fond ___ music." → of.
10. "The cat hid ___ the bed." → under.
11. "He apologised ___ his rude behaviour." → for.
12. "I prefer coffee ___ tea." → to.

Part 10 — More preposition meanings & phrase bank

These fixed phrases appear constantly and each carries a specific meaning that changing the preposition would destroy — in time and on time are not interchangeable, nor are in the end and at the end. Learn them as sealed units.

Part 11 — Why "no-preposition" verbs catch everyone

A surprising share of preposition questions are won not by adding the right preposition but by refusing to add one. English has a set of common verbs that, in standard usage, take a direct object with no preposition: discuss, enter, marry, resemble, reach, request, order, comprise, lack, approach, accompany. Because everyday speech often inserts a preposition after them — "discuss about the plan", "enter into the hall", "reach to the office", "marry with her" — these wrong forms sound completely normal, which is exactly why the exam uses them. The defence is simple: memorise the no-preposition list and treat any preposition following one of these verbs as suspect. (The one nuance: a few of them take a preposition in a different, idiomatic sense — "enter into an agreement", "comprise of" is disputed but "composed of" is safe — but for the literal physical sense, none is needed.) Combine this rule with the in/on/at logic for time and place and the rote-learned collocations, and you have the section covered from all three sides: the patternable, the idiomatic, and the deliberately tempting traps.

Part 12 — Prepositions of time: a closer look at the borders

The in/on/at system is reliable, but a handful of borders deserve special attention because the exam returns to them. At is for precise points — clock times (at 6), mealtimes (at lunch), festivals seen as points (at Diwali, at Christmas), and the fixed at night, at noon, at midnight, at dawn. On governs days and dates and anything pinned to a particular day — on Sunday, on 26 January, on New Year's Day, on the morning of the exam (note: once a part of the day is tied to a specific date, it flips from in the morning to on the morning of…). In covers the broad containers of time — in April, in 2027, in summer, in the holidays, in the twenty-first century — and the general parts of day, in the morning/afternoon/evening (but at night). Two more high-value pairs: use for with a length of time (for two hours, for a week) and since with a starting point (since Monday, since 2020); and use by for a deadline (finish by Friday) versus until/till for a continuing state up to a point (wait until five). Getting these borders right resolves the bulk of time-preposition questions, and because each rule is genuinely systematic, a little practice fixes them permanently rather than relying on memory of individual phrases.

Part 13 — How to use this page

Master the in/on/at logic for time (Parts 1 and 12) and place (Part 2), learn the direction words (Part 3), and rote-learn the verb and adjective collocations (Parts 4–5) inside little sentences. Drill the phrase bank in Part 10, the rapid-fire set in Part 9, and the no-preposition verbs in Part 11, then practise with gap-fills.

One-line revision: at = point, on = surface/day, in = inside/period; learn verb+prep and adj+prep as fixed units; and remember discuss/enter/marry/reach take no preposition.