Don’t abuse the preposition “to” (5)

Don’t abuse the preposition to. In other words, don’t try to force it to do the work of other prepositions. I have posted examples before; here is another:

On a web page titled “Difference between Page Views and Impressions,” the first paragraph is:

“Page views and impressions are two commonly used words in the field of web analytics. These words are used interchangeably sometimes to denote the number of visits to a particular website. The term impression has a particular meaning however in context to page impressions; it is used as the same as page views. Generally, Impression is used in context to advertisement impressions.” (Boldface added.)

The preposition “to” should have been “of”: “in context to” should have been “in the context of.”

In the second paragaph, the writer has trouble with another preposition:

“The total number of page views can be divided with the number of unique visitors to calculate the average number of page views generated by a single user.” (Boldface added.)

The preposition “with” should have been “by”: “divided with” should have been “divided by.”

The Takeaway: Be precise with your prepositions. Carelessness can makes you look ill-educated and ill-read.

See disclaimer.