Choose the word that places the sentence in time or in space
The train leaves at 7.30 on Tuesday.
She lives in Portugal, at an address I have forgotten.Each sentence has a gap where a word placing something in time or in space belongs. Write the one word that fits. In one of the five the correct answer is that no word belongs there at all: for that item write the word for an absence, so a deliberate choice can be told apart from a forgotten one. Ask yourself whether the thing after the gap is being treated as a point, as a surface, or as a container.
1. The meeting starts ___ nine on Thursday morning.
2. My birthday falls ___ the fourteenth of March.
3. She has lived ___ Portugal since she was a child.
4. We are going to visit them ___ next summer.
5. He left his umbrella ___ the table in the hall.Show the answers
1. at
2. on
3. in
4. nothing
5. onItems 1, 2 and 3 run straight up the scale: a clock time is a point, a date is a bounded surface, and a country is a container. Item 4 is the trap, and it is the commonest error with these three words: the expression already begins with a word meaning the one after this, and that whole group stands without any preposition in front. Item 5 tests whether you are reading the geometry rather than the noun, since the sentence names two pieces of furniture and only the first is the surface the umbrella is resting on; the second sits inside a container preposition of its own, which is there to distract you.