Prepositional Phrases

Prepositions are words that show how a something exists in relation to the rest of the sentence - usually when or where.

Some examples of common prepositions are:

about
above
across
after
against
along
among
around
at
before
behind
below
beneath
beside
between
beyond
but
by
despite
down
during
except
for
from
in
inside
into
like
near
of
off
on
onto
out
outside
over
past
since
through
throughout
till
to
toward
under
underneath
until
up
upon
with
within
without

A prepositional phrase is the preposition and the rest of the description. In the following examples, the prepositional phrase is in bold.

The books on the table are missing pages.

In this example, the prepositional phrase separates the subject of the sentence (the books) and the predicate of the sentence (are). This is why it's important to be aware of prepositional phrases: When they separate the subject and the verb, it's easy to accidentally conjugate the verb based on the last word of the prepositional phrase, as opposed to conjugating the verb based on the subject, which is correct. For example, in this sentence, the verb is conjugated incorrectly:

The beings from outer space was green.

If you remove the prepositional phrase, you'll see that the simple subject-verb-object sentence for this example is: The beings were green. Therefore, when inserting the prepositional phrase, we still need to make sure that the verb conjugation matches the subject, not the last word of the prepositional phrase (in this case, space). So, the correct version of this example is:

The beings from outer space were green.

Your assignment: Create six pairs of sentences with prepositional phrases separating the subject and the verb. The first sentence in each pair will show the incorrect verb conjugation, and the second sentence in each pair will show the correct conjugation.

Examples of the sentence pairs:

Incorrect: The students of Riverhead Middle School is funny.
Correct: The students of Riverhead Middle School are funny.

Incorrect: The house with four windows look pretty.
Correct: The house with four windows looks pretty.

Incorrect: Literature regarding teenagers tend to be about individuality issues.
Correct: Literature regarding teenagers tends to be about individuality issues.