Please don’t continue on

Add comment June 11th, 2009

A common problem in English is a verb hooked up with the wrong preposition. Less common but by no means rare is a verb carrying a preposition as excess baggage.

For example, “continue on,” “admit to” and “divide up.”

In “The negotiators decided to adjourn for the night and continue on in the morning,” delete “on.”

In “Spanky finally admitted to taking the cookies,” delete “to.”

In “Smith’s accomplices insisted they divide up the money first,” delete “up.”

However, these are not “search-and-replace” usages. For example, the prepositions should stay in the following:

“We’ll surely get lost if we continue on this road.”

“Spanky admitted to me that he took the cookies.”

“Let’s split the money before we divide up and split.”

And now my head is splitting.