Level: elementary
We use phrases with prepositions as time adverbials:
- We use at with:
| clock times: | at seven o'clock | at nine thirty | at fifteen hundred hours | |
| mealtimes: | at breakfast | at lunchtime | at teatime | |
| these phrases: | at night | at the weekend | at Christmas | at Easter |
- We use in with:
| seasons of the year: | in (the) spring/summer/autumn/winter | ||||
| years, centuries, decades: | in 2009 | in 1998 | in the 20th century | in the 60s | in the 1980s |
| months: | in January/February/March etc. | ||||
| parts of the day: | in the morning | in the afternoon | in the evening |
- We use on with:
| days: | on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday etc. | on Christmas day | on my birthday | |
| dates: | on the thirty-first of July | on June the fifteenth |
| Be careful! |
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We say at night when we are talking about all of the night:
but we say in the night when we are talking about a specific time during the night:
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We often use a noun phrase as a time adverbial:
| yesterday | today | tomorrow |
| last week/month/year | this week/month/year | next week/month/year |
| last Saturday | this Tuesday | next Friday |
| the day before yesterday | the day after tomorrow | |
| one day/week/month | ||
| the other day/week/month |
We can put time phrases together:
We will meet next week at six o'clock on Monday.
I heard a funny noise at about eleven o'clock last night.
It happened last week at seven o'clock on Monday night.
We use ago with the past simple to say how long before the time of speaking something happened:
I saw Jim about three weeks ago.
We arrived a few minutes ago.
We use in with a future form to say how long after the time of speaking something will happen:
I'll see you in a month.
Our train's leaving in five minutes.
- When (time and dates)
Hello LearnEnglish Team,
I have some doubts about how to use between in the sentence "The event will be held between 3 and 4 March. Is it correct to use between with two consecutive days? Is the sentence "The event will be held from 3 to 4 March" any better? I would be very grateful for your help. Thank you in advance.
Hello BettyD,
It's not grammatically incorrect to use 'between' in this way (it's also fine to say 'from 3 to 4 March'), but I imagine that most style guides would recommend against it for simplicity's sake.
When there is a range of dates, it's also common to use an 'en dash' ('The event will be held 3–7 March'), though again this is a question of style. This works with any range of dates, whether it be two days or more.
I'd recommend 'on 3 and 4 March' or '3–4 March' -- I think these are simpler and so slightly clearer. But please note I'm not a qualified copy editor!
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
LearnEnglish team
Hello!
Could you please tell me if "that" is similiar with "this"? Do you say "that month" "that year", "that day" or "IN that month", "IN that year", "ON that day"?
Thank you so much for being so helpful and polite, and thank you for answering this post beforehand!!!
Hello howtosay_,
Usually we do not use a preposition before 'this' and 'that' in time phrases: this week, that weekend etc. However, we do use prepositions when we are referring to something earlier in the text:
"Today I'm going to talk about 1939. In/During that year the conflict we call the Second World War began."
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello, I have a question about prepositions to be used with dates.
Today a native speaker teacher (from Canada) told me (during an English class) that in dates we should use the preposition
- ON if followed by day and month (ON the 1st of November),
BUT the preposition
- AT if followed by day, month and year (AT the 1st November 1998).
I was really surprised, I always used ON. I tried to do some research and I found no trace of "AT" with complete dates. Can you help and tell me what the right form is?
Hi Spolzel,
I would use "on" (not "at") in both of those examples (I'm a British English speaker). I'm not aware of "at" being used in this way. Could it be a usage in your teacher's locality?
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Anna!
Please what is the right verb to be used after '7 days' ...?
For example: 7 days ..........just so closed.
Between 'is' or 'are' which one is appropriate?
Hello Unyime Udoka,
Most of the time people would probably say 'is' here, which implies they think of the seven days as a unit of time. It's also possible to say 'are', though, because it's also possible to think of seven days as a plural subject.
Personally, I would say 'is'.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Vinnie75,
It's possible to use in with past forms as well as future.
When we use in with future forms it can have to meanings, depending on the context: to show how long after the time of speaking a task is done, or to show how long it will take to complete:
When we use in with past forms it only tells us how long a task took:
For the second meaning in the past we would need to use a verb like promise:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Vinnie75,
Your understanding is correct apart from one point. We don't use 'in' to talk about the duration of an activity, but the duration of time it took to achieve a goal. Thus, we would say 'we rode a bike for two hours' (not 'in'). However, we could say 'we rode to the top of the hill in two hours', because this describes a completed task or goal.
duration of an activity: for
time taken to achieve a goal or complete a task: in
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Salum Hilali,
In general, you need to use 'on' in sentences 1 and 2, and also in similar sentences. I'm afraid it's really difficult to generalise about all sentences, as exactly how we say things depends a lot on the situation the sentence is used in.
You might find this page in the Cambridge Dictionary helpful.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi RamyLarrom,
I think I'd probably say Five years ago this week, ... . 'This week' can be used as a time adverbial, without a preposition, so I wouldn't use in or on here.
Does that make sense?
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi RamyLarrom,
Oh, I see :) Then, I'd just write Five years ago this week (without continuing the sentence).
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Y74629Y,
The distinction is quite simple, I think. An adverb is a single word which modifies a verb or a clause/sentence. An adverbial is a word or a group of words with the same function. In other words, all adverbs are adverbials.
In your examples, 'yesterday' and 'then' are both adverbs as they are single words. They are also adverbials, as all adverbs are part of the larger group which we call adverbials.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Chekytan,
You can use these three phrases in several different orders and people would understand them all. I think it'd be clearer, though, if you put 'next week' and 'on Monday' next to each other (it doesn't really matter which goes first), since they both refer to a day and the other phrase refers to a time.
When there's a prepositional phrase that refers to time (e.g. 'in the afternoon') and another prepositional phrase that refers to a place (e.g. 'to the beach'), usually the place phrase comes before the time phrase: 'We're going to the beach in the afternoon' is more natural than '
We're going in the afternoon to the beach'. The second one isn't really wrong, but native speakers almost always use the first order instead of the second one.All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello DebbieV
When we make a day of the week plural after the preposition 'on', it refers to repeated events. For example, 'I go to the market on Fridays' means I go there every Friday, whereas 'I'm going to the market on Friday' refers to my plan for one specific Friday. Actually, quite often, people leave out the preposition 'on' and just say the plural day of the week ('I go to the market Fridays').
I'm not sure I'd say 'evenings' (which is not a day of the week) in the first sentence you ask about, but it doesn't sound wrong to me and I'd understand it to mean 'every evening' -- though of course the adverb 'always' also makes this clear.
In the second case you ask about, 'in the morning' is another way of saying 'a.m.' -- in this case, 'morning' (or any other time of day) isn't used in the plural in any situation that I can think of.
Does that help you make sense of it?
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Anna
The last one is the best choice -- normally, a preposition isn't used before 'the next day'.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Smiley1,
The correct terms are, as you say, on schedule and on time.
If you say on the schedule then it is a mistake, but not one which would stop people understanding you.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello mFred
The second one is the best one, though in standard British English the word 'seconds' would be 'second' (in the singular). Units that are used as part of a noun modifier usually go in the singular -- this is why 'second' is better here. Another example is 'a twenty-kilo sack of rice' or 'a one-litre bottle'.
The indefinite article 'an' goes with the noun 'break'. But since 'break' has the noun modifier 'eight seconds' before it, and 'eight seconds' begins with a vowel sound, we use 'an' instead of 'a'.
I hope that helps you and your friends!
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team