The Real Logic of IN, ON & AT

The Real Logic of IN, ON & AT*.

Hi people.

The very first posts seemed to look too much at prepositions, so I felt it was necessary to take a different road for a while. Now, however, it seems there is still a great need to keep reviewing some specific concepts.

When I start a student's first class(es) I usually focus on the problems associated with these three main PREPOSITIONS — IN, AT, ON — as positional forms.

Why, you might ask?
Well, it seems that this is where I might be able to instil an understanding of English not as another challenge, but as another essential tool towards a better understanding of our global community and a way towards better communication.
This said, the most I can hope for is to plant seeds that may one day germinate into a better feeling for the language — and maybe even a better appreciation of their own language.

To this end, let’s proceed.

When learning Portuguese, I often had difficulties getting used to the genders of objects, something we don’t have in English. I realized, after a long, long time, that Portuguese speakers had had these genders drilled into them from an early age. What seemed so difficult to me was as simple to them as many of our prepositions are to us.

How do we make this same sense of prepositions as vivid to learners of English as it is to us?

I try to create a KEYWORD of association for each of these prepositions.

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IN → INSIDE

For IN I suggest the keyword INSIDE.
This one word places all objects INSIDE their related environment.

A book might be ON the table, but the same book IN the table suggests that the table has a special kind of compartment for the book to be placed INSIDE it — very much like those school desks we had as children, where the top lifted up so we could put our materials inside.

But IN also includes areas:

• IN the city
• IN Brazil
• IN the room
• IN the Amazon

If the idea is “within boundaries,” IN applies — whether those boundaries are tiny or enormous.

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ON → SURFACE

For ON I suggest the keyword SURFACE.
Again we have a very visual clue to ON, especially when we think of the sea.
A boat or ship floats ON the SURFACE of the sea.
A book sits ON the surface of a table.
Chairs and tables stand ON a floor.

But English also uses ON in several other ways that follow this same logic.

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ON as “on a LINE or ROUTE”

A road, street, avenue, or route is seen as a line you travel along.

So:

• ON Paulista Avenue
• ON the main road
• ON the first floor (a surface layer)

The idea is movement or positioning along something.

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ON as “on a WAVE or MEDIUM” — the TV/Radio/Internet explanation

This one is extremely helpful for Brazilian learners.

Before televisions, radios, telephones, or the internet existed, information was transmitted along waves — sound waves, radio waves, frequency waves. Even modern digital signals still behave like waves in physical terms.

So we “ride” a wave the same way a surfer rides a wave at the beach.

This is why English uses ON for modern media:

• ON TV
• ON the radio
• ON the internet
• ON YouTube
• ON WhatsApp
• ON Instagram
• ON the phone

Information travels on the wave.

Once students understand this, the error “in the TV / in the WhatsApp” stops instantly.

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ON with Vehicles — the historical logic

Now, one of the biggest mysteries for students:

Why do we say:

• ON the bus
• ON the train
• ON the ship
• ON the plane

…but IN a car?

The answer is historical and beautifully logical.

Before modern vehicles existed:

• People rode on the horse and cart — literally sitting on the wooden platform.
• Early trains had no walls or enclosed compartments — passengers stood on the platform, holding onto bars.
• Ships had open decks — people slept on deck.
• Buses evolved from open carriages where you sat on the structure.

In every case, you stepped up onto a raised platform.

And even today:

• You step onto the bus.
• You step onto the plane.
• You step onto the train.
• You step onto the ship.

So you are ON these vehicles.

A car, however, is different:

• It is small and enclosed.
• You lower yourself into it.
• You sit in a private internal space.

Thus:

• IN a car, but
• ON all the larger public vehicles.

The logic holds perfectly when explained this way.

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AT → EXACT

For AT I suggest the keyword EXACT.

While I focus here on positional uses, AT as a time preposition also highlights its exactness:

• I will meet you AT 12 o’clock (12 exactly).

In the same way, we state an EXACT position when we use AT to describe a location:

• I will meet you AT the shopping center.
• I will meet you AT the bar.

In São Paulo, we have the Gazeta building.
All I know about it is that it is ON (surface/line) Paulista Avenue, a very famous street IN São Paulo.
If I knew the EXACT address number, I could say it is located AT XXX Paulista Avenue.

The logic becomes almost mathematical:

• IN São Paulo (inside an area)
• ON Paulista Avenue (on a line/surface)
• AT 1234 Paulista Avenue (exact point)

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Residential addresses

For residential addresses:

• I live ON Residential Street.
• More exactly: I live AT XXX Residential Street.

Same logic for businesses.

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Testing the system

Let’s revisit:

• AT the shopping center is EXACT.
• AT Starbucks is EXACT.
• IN the shopping center is inside the area.
• ON the first floor is a SURFACE (a level).

We cannot meet ON the shopping center unless people can stand physically on top of it.

We cannot meet IN the airport if we consider that an airport consists of not only buildings but runways and other external facilities.
We meet AT the airport (the exact activity point).

Once inside a terminal, we can meet:

• AT the coffee shop
• IN the terminal
• ON the second floor

Everything matches the INSIDE / SURFACE / EXACT picture.

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Final thought

We must be able to see the sometimes crazy, even ridiculous results that happen when the wrong preposition is used.
But once we understand and FEEL the difference between:

• IN = INSIDE
• ON = SURFACE / LINE / WAVE / PLATFORM
• AT = EXACT point

the demon known as English prepositions becomes a lot more manageable — even logical.

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IN, ON & AT (Time & Dates) — The Full Logic, Finally Clear

IN, ON & AT (Time & Dates) — The Full Logic, Finally Clear.*

Hi people.

In a previous BazSpeak post, I explained IN, ON, and AT as positional prepositions — INSIDE, SURFACE, and EXACT.
Today we continue that same journey, but now applied to time, where the very same patterns appear again.

Most learners think English time expressions are random.
They're not.
They follow the same shapes as physical space.

Let’s use the same KEYWORDS:

• IN → INSIDE

• ON → SURFACE / DAY

• AT → EXACT

Once you see time through these images, everything lines up.

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IN → INSIDE (Months, Years, Decades, Centuries)

Just as IN places an object inside a box,
IN places an event inside a “time box”:

• IN January

• IN 2024

• IN the 1990s

• IN the Middle Ages

• IN the morning / afternoon / evening

• IN three weeks

• IN the future

A month, a year, a decade — these are all containers.

If the time period has an inside, English uses IN.

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ON → SURFACE / THE DAY

A day in English behaves like a flat surface.
You place events onto it.

So we say:

• ON Monday

• ON the 25th of December

• ON Christmas Day

• ON New Year’s Day

• ON your birthday

• ON the anniversary of São Paulo

• ON the weekend (US usage)

Names, numbers, titles — it doesn’t matter.
If it's a day, it’s ON it.

---

AT → EXACT (Clock Time & Precise Moments)

AT is the preposition of precision:

• AT 8:00

• AT noon

• AT midnight

• AT dawn

• AT the start

• AT the exact moment you called

One point.
One pin.
One precise instant.

Exactly like positional AT.

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IN TIME vs ON TIME — The Perfect Example

Here’s a story I often use in class:

We booked dinner for 8 o’clock, but we arrived at 8:30.
Everyone else had eaten, but we arrived in time for dessert.

Why?

ON TIME = punctual

• at the exact scheduled moment

• not late

We were definitely not on time.

IN TIME = before the deadline closes

Dessert hadn’t finished yet.
We were inside the still-available time window.

Same geometry:

• ON time = exact point

• IN time = inside the remaining period

It always fits the picture.

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IN the morning / afternoon / evening — but AT night

This is a huge source of confusion, but entirely logical.

Morning, afternoon, and evening are treated as time containers — blocks of time with an inside.

So we say:

• IN the morning

• IN the afternoon

• IN the evening

But:

Night is different.

Night is understood as a point of activity rather than a time container.

You go out AT night.
You sleep AT night.
The city changes AT night.

Thus:

• AT night

• AT midnight

Night behaves like an exact setting or moment — so it takes AT.

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THIS morning, THIS afternoon, THIS evening, TONIGHT

Now the “inside vs exact” pattern appears again.

Today’s periods use “this”:

• this morning

• this afternoon

• this evening

And then:

The night version becomes:

• tonight (not this night)

Why?

Because English treats “tonight” as a single activity point, not a container.
This mirrors AT night perfectly.

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Yesterday morning / afternoon / evening — and last night

Another beautiful example of consistency.

For “yesterday,” we keep the three time containers:

• yesterday morning

• yesterday afternoon

• yesterday evening

But again, night is different:

• last night (not yesterday night)

Because night = point → AT night → “last night.”

It always circles back to INSIDE vs EXACT.

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Summary (Time Edition)

IN = inside a time container

IN January, IN 2024, IN the 1990s, IN the morning, IN the evening

ON = the surface of a day

ON Monday, ON the 25th, ON your birthday

AT = a precise point

AT 10 am, AT midnight, AT the start of class

IN time = before the deadline closes

ON time = at the exact scheduled moment

IN the morning / IN the afternoon / IN the evening

AT night / tonight / last night

Time follows space:
IN (inside), ON (surface), AT (exact).

Once students feel these patterns, the chaos disappears and the logic shines through.

Plural Nouns and Uncountables

How much work have you done today? Did you have much time to do any research? How many people did you contact and how many children were involved. How many jobs do you have and how many days do you rest? How much furniture do you really need and do you want all that equipment in the same room? Is there too much information or too much software that makes it hard to access all the information we need? And there is of course no new news to think about.

Okay, so what is all that about?
The sentences above are full of NOUNS. Yep, those horrible types that are considered uncountable, or plural, or collectives or simply not singular in any way. Many look like their Portuguese equivalents and all of them work differently to the way they are used in Portuguese.

Many nouns can be classified into several meaningful groups which affect the way they can be referenced in English.
Liquids are considered uncountable. Why? Because when we look at a liquid there is no way of counting the liquid without referring to their containers. We have cups, bottles, cartons, barrels, drums, and so many other containers of liquid.
If you ask for a Beer, what are you asking for? Is it a Glass, a Can, a Bottle, Mug, Jug, Pint, Quart or even a yard of beer? When we say "Give me two Beers!", we assume that the person serving us understands the UNIT of Beer we are referring to.
Similarly, ordering two Coffees doesn't mean we are counting a liquid called Coffee, but that we are expecting to receive two CUPS of Coffee.

Grains - Far too small to consider counting. Grains of Sand, Salt, Sugar, Wheat and even Rice.
"Please give me 300 salts, rice!" just doesn't cut it. It is far easier to ask for SOME salt or rice.

Collectives - A term I use when talking about things like furniture. I can have two Tables and four Chairs but I can't have six Furnitures. The word furniture collects similar items under one category the is used as a general representation of those objects. The same is done with Equipment, Information, and Software.
Computers have lots of different software. The operating system is a PIECE of software, as is the Spreadsheet program (Excel) or the programs used to record data and convert files from one format to the other.

Plural nouns are the most annoying. One child and two children. One man and two men. One woman and two women. One person and two people. (While person can be written as persons in the plural, the form People is better used to represent more than one person.)

And finally, the nouns that look plural yet have no singular format.
The most common of these is NEWS. NEWS is NEWS. There is no other format for NEWS.
I have a NEW for you, makes no sense. I have some NEWS, or I have an important piece of NEWS for you is correct. NEW is the opposite to OLD and is an adjective describing a noun.
We have NEWS programs, NEWS desks, NEWS stands and reporters who write the NEWS.
Together with NEWS we also have SPORTS.
I drive a SPORTS car when wearing a SPORTS coat. And now for the SPORTS NEWS.

And you are right in thinking there are so many more uncountable references. My next post will deal with the structures associated with these uncountable variants.

Themes - The Sea

One of the very interesting aspects of English is the very visual nature of the language. The words themselves seem to encapsulate so much of the sense of the original meaning of the words and attribute the same characteristics to a new context. Quite often it isn't only the visual aspect that is sensed. The sounds can be heard as much as the smells and tastes too. Descriptive assimilation is probably the hallmark of the English language.

More / Also

And now to something a little different.

MORE

In the last post I looked at ANother and other. What I didn`t mention was a common mistake I hear and correct a lot.

In English, we use MORE in several different ways. I have MORE time than I thought. There are several MORE things that need to be done. They need only one MORE number to win.

In Portuguese the word MORE and PLUS are the same, mais.
They need mais uma (MORE one) number to win.
Two mais (PLUS) two equals four.

The use of MORE in these two examples is distracting and interrupts the steady flow of the conversation. Coupled with this is the fact that we can also use ANOTHER in the same position as mais is used in Portuguese.

You have ANOTHER three tasks to complete before you leave. You have three MORE tasks to complete before you leave.

They have taken ANOTHER 10% off the price.
Can you wait ANOTHER 10 minutes please? Can you wait 10 MORE minutes please?

The agreement is, you give us your car PLUS R$2000 and we will give you this new model.
If you ADD another R$2000, we will also give you all the optional extras. So that will be, your car PLUS R$2000 for the car, PLUS R$2000 to include the optional extras. That will be a total of R$24000 for this new model that would normally cost R$30000. Congratulations!


ALSO

ALSO is the translation from the word tambem in Portuguese.The problem is that we can ALSO use AS WELL or TOO. So what's the difference? They are positional in use. In the first section of this post, there are a number of examples of the positional use of ALSO.

TOO is universal but;

The word ALSO goes before the verb., I ALSO/TOO like to sing. He ALSO/TOO travels a lot.

When we need to refer to something as ALSO at the end of a sentence, we use AS WELL.
I like to sing AS WELL/TOO. He travels a lot AS WELL/TOO.

We cannot say - He AS WELL travels a lot.
We should NOT say - He travels a lot ALSO. Some Americans can be heard using ALSO at the end of a sentence, but strictly speaking, it is still not considered the correct form.

I ALSO had ANOTHER thing to ADD to this post, but then again there are other things AS WELL that need to be discussed. PLUS this is already boring enough  and that is a good reason TOO.

Another vs Other

Another problem, among all other problems, is the use of ANOTHER and OTHER.

    -  It seems that the only translation learnt when starting to study English is ANOTHER. It is used here universally for singular and plural items.

    -  The problem is probably compounded through the fact that ANOTHER is one word whereas in Portuguese it is two words.

    -  ANOTHER has to be seen as not one word, but as two words that have been joined together to form only the one.

    -  AN is the Article and signifies ONE as in AN event, AN interesting article, AN Elephant etc.
AN OTHER or ANOTHER is a variation of the same theme.
    -  In use we say - There is ONE OTHER problem, or ANOTHER problem. ONE OTHER thing - ANOTHER thing I like etc.

    -  If the object is plural, it makes no sense to use ANOTHER things. But we can, and should use - OTHER things, OTHER people, OTHER objects. ANOTHER person had OTHER ideas about the project.

    -  OTHER never uses an `S` when followed by an object. The sentence `He has OTHERS cars` is wrong. `He has ANOTHER car, or he has OTHER cars.`

    -  The form OTHERS (with the S) is only used when we already know what the object is and the object doesn't need to be repeated.
    -  John and his friends have 5 cars. He has one car and the OTHERS have two cars each.(OTHER friends)
    -  The only OTHER country that speaks Portuguese in the Americas is Haiti. No OTHER countries speak Portuguese. One country speaks French and the OTHERS speak Spanish. ANOTHER country that speaks Portuguese is Portugal.

Possessive Pronouns

In recent posts, I have referred to the Gender issue when moving across from English to Portuguese and back again. Quite often, it seemed to matter only when taking into consideration the use of Articles in a structure.

More recently I discovered another anomaly where Gender plays a great part.

Consider the following sentence.
      'Mary took HIS car to be fixed' 
    -   I of course, tried to correct this and at times joked with the student about an unidentified MALE entity that was suddenly introduced into the conversation.
    -   I never really tried to understand the reason behind the mistake, especially when the student seemed to use the possessive pronoun correctly in the sentence 'Mary took HER table to be fixed'
    -   Over subsequent classes, the problem returned and disappeared seemingly randomly so I put it down to tiredness or a lack of attention.

    -   Then, last week I was prompted to reflect on this issue once again when I referred to the Gender influence.

With the help of some of my students, I began to learn the true reason why Brazilians confuse the use of possessive pronouns in English.

    -   The Subject - I, we, you, they etc take the possessive attitude in English. Objects are referred to by the pronoun 'It'. When we wish to attribute a possessive attitude to an object it will always be with Its.

    -   'Mary took her Car with its broken window to be fixed'.
    -   'The dog buried its bone under the tree.'

In Portuguese, the possessive form is attributed to the object.
    -   In the sentence, 'Mary took HIS car to be fixed'  (Mary levou SEU carro) - it is the object Car that is referred to in the possessive case. Car is carro in Portuguese and receives a masculine attribute, 'o carro', hence the use of HIS.
    -   In the sentence ''Mary took HER table to be fixed, (Mary levou SUA mesa). Table = mesa, receiving a female attribute - 'a mesa', resulting in HER table.
    -   Portuguese is more like English when the structure changes in the sentence - 'Mary levou o carro dela' (Mary took the car hers), or 'Mary levou a mesa dela' (Mary took the table hers).


Now that you understand the reasoning behind the mistakes made, it is time to remind you of the correct structures.
Mary took HER car and HER table to be fixed. The gender case is the subject Mary, she - her.
John took HIS car and HIS table to be fixed. Once again the Gender case is the subject John, he - his.
They took THEIR cars and THEIR tables to be fixed. (They - their)
We took OUR cars and OUR tables to be fixed. (We - our)
Mary took HER brother to the doctor's, then John took HIS sister out to dinner. Later they took THEIR mother to the cinema. (as above)