They’re the words that show the relationship between people, places and things. The wrong preposition can change a sentence’s meaning.
Trevor Gordon, of Andersons Bay, has a "vexing" question about prepositions on which he is seeking "clarity".
An article on the front page on a recent Saturday described a head-on collision taking place "in" Portobello Rd.
Trevor argues that the incident surely occurred "on" the road. If the cars had slid into the harbour, they would have slid "off" the road, not "out" of it.
Trevor noted, in the same edition, that a similar incident in Balclutha had occurred "on" the road.
"One drives on or along a street or road while also able to turn into the same", he wrote. "Yes, I know we can live in a street."
Civis inquired about guidance from the ODT style book and received this information.
"in/on, when referring to streets and roads, please use in. The building was in Stuart St NOT on Stuart St. The car crashed in Stuart St NOT on Stuart St. He walked in Stuart St NOT on Stuart St. The only exception is when referring to state highways, e.g. The accident occurred on State Highway 1 just north of Timaru."
The sub-editors, so often "on" the ball, must have missed picking up "on" the reporter’s style error from the Balclutha crash.
Of course, while much of all this seems rather arbitrary, remaining on point allows for the consistency that marks professional publications.
If this is confusing for native English speakers, just imagine the difficulties faced by others.
Portuguese and Spanish speakers have told Civis that their use of prepositions often fails to translate consistently with English. This is one part of language where they are most likely to make mistakes.
By the way, did you notice one of the crashes happened "in" Balclutha, not "at" Balclutha. Would we say a crash happened "in", say, Luggate or "at" Luggate?
Are the in and outs of these ins and ats dependent on the size of a settlement? What about a bigger but still small place — in or at Waitati? Civis wonders what the ODT has to say about that.
* * *
How many readers noticed last week that Mackenzie Pass and Mackenzie Basin were spelt differently to the man they were named after, folk hero James McKenzie?
There’s also the Mackenzie Country and the Mackenzie District Council. A Lake Mackenzie and Mackenzie Hut are by the Routeburn Track.
Although Civis had consistently spelt the places and the person as Mackenzie, the ODT style book dictated otherwise, and this column was corrected. A sharp sub-editor somehow knew to check the spelling, and whether the style book went to that level of detail on the sheep drover’s name.
Civis had used the McKenzie spelling "James Mackenzie" from Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. The 1977 dramatised television series was called The Mackenzie Affair.
To confuse matters further, the 2006 plaque on the statue in Fairlie to McKenzie and his dog spells "MacKenzie" with a capital K.
Civis this week went to the classic three-volume 1966 An Encyclopedia of New Zealand, edited by the distinguished historian A. H. McLintock. It has an entry for James (c. 1920-?) McKenzie, noting he had become "such a legendary figure that it is now almost impossible to disentangle fact from fiction".
It also says "The MacKenzie Country, though of different spelling, is named after McKenzie, though he was not the discoverer of the region". That upper case K after Mac appears again.
Are there other South Island examples of incongruity between people’s names and the places or streets named after them?
