Correct use of the preposition “at”

The preposition “at” has at least 13 definitions. Most prepositions are similar to the preposition “at” – they have many definitions. This is the main reason why we often use prepositions in confusing ways.

Example

Here’s a typical example of a confusing use of the preposition “at.” Last week in The Huffington Post, Sam Stein wrote a piece headlined “Pelosi Protesters, Including Kid In Stroller, Compare Obama To Hitler.” The first two paragraphs read as follows:

"Two members of the audience at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) town hall meeting in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday – including a toddler in a stroller – were bedecked with images equating Barack Obama’s policies to Nazism and the president to Hitler himself.

"The photos, which were passed to the Huffington Post by a Democratic reader, are the latest evidence of the increasingly wild accusations leveled by protesters at health-care town halls – though these may be some of the more remarkable yet." (Boldface added.)

On encountering the preposition “at,” the reader may think that the town halls were the target of the accusations. (The second definition of the preposition “at” is “To or toward the direction or location of.”)

But then the reader realizes that the logic of that statement is probably wrong. Usually, an accusation is leveled at a person(s). So, the writer probably meant that the protestors were at town halls when they leveled their accusations at Congressmen. In other words, the writer used the preposition “at” in its first definition, “In or near the area occupied by; in or near the location of.”

A clear version of the sentence would be something like this:

The photos, which were passed to The Huffington Post by a Democratic reader, are the latest evidence of the increasingly wild accusations that protesters at health-care town halls are leveling at Congressmen – though these may be some of the more remarkable accusations yet.

The Takeaway: Remember that prepositions such as “at,” “in,” “on” and “over” have many definitions. Whenever you use a preposition, be sure that the surrounding syntax makes the meaning of the preposition clear.