Being smart, you don’t land ON a good job, you LAND A good job

I will never tire of speaking about this most treacherous component of English grammar – preposition. As we have noted before in this space, there isn’t a coherent rule on how to “correctly” use the preposition.

A learner will only be advised to widen his sphere of exposure, which entails reading beyond exam needs as well as mixing with, and listening to, good English speaking role models.

Let us bring to the fore numerous preposition mistakes committed by scribblers—including some of who are otherwise capable members of Fourth Estates. Here we go…

On Page 15 of the huge tabloid from Nairobi that commands a sizeable readership in Bongo, there is an opinion piece entitled, ‘BBI ruling will affect Uhuru legacy, court credibility’. Therein, the scribbler writes:

“The BBI ruling heralded the coming of age of the Supreme Court—which comprises OF seven judges…”

Hello, we don’t say: comprises ‘of’ so and so; we should say: comprises so and so. If you feel it would kill you if you failed to us the preposition ‘of’, then say, “COMPOSED OF so and so…” Check this out in your dictionary—or simply, google it.

Then, Page 2 of the Friday, April 8 edition of the tabloid closely associated with this columnist carries a story entitled, ‘Local firms shine amidst Ukraine conflict’. In this one, the scribbler, in his effort to report what the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange chief said, writes the following:

“This increase, he said, was attributed BY the increase of stock prices in the domestic trading counters…”

Just a minute! A situation is not attributed “by” one thing or another; rather, it is attributed TO one thing or another. Yes!

On Page 3 of the same tabloid, there’s a story whose headline reads: ‘Tanzanian engineer secures top job at the AU’. Our scribbling colleague’s intro reads thus:

“A Tanzanian has landed ON a top job at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.”

Oops! When you get a job, we say you have LANDED it (not landed “on” it). Which is to say our compatriot Kamugisha Kazaura, who had served as the East African Community’s Director of Infrastructure since 2021, has now landed a TOP job at the AU.

Then, there’s a Page 7 story in Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet (April 9 edition) whose headline reads, ‘Dish out more funds ON climate change resilience, organic farming, government urged’.

Hello, Mr Subeditor; we don’t dish out (release) money “on” some project; we dish out money FOR some project.

Finally, regarding prepositions. In Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, April 9, there is a story entitled ‘DIT donates 120 pairs of shoes to pupils in Mwanza’.

In Para 9 of this story, the scribbler reports on what a head teacher said by writing this: “He also explained the need OF more classrooms for the school that has over 1,500 pupils…”

The need “of” more classrooms? Nope! We say “…the need FOR more classrooms…”

Enough on prepositions. Now let us take a look at a story in the tabloid I cite above, whose headline is, “Hope for Moro accident victims’ insurance pay claims,” the scribbler purports to quote an insurance boss thus: “We are seriously maintaining our CLOSE EYES on the compensation claims to ensure all victims are TIMELY compensated.”

What is “maintaining close eyes”? In the context of what the boss is alleged to have said, the expression means nothing in English!

And then, “timely” is an adjective, and adjectives aren’t used to qualify verbs, such as “compensate”.

So, let me redeem the insurance chief’s message with a rewrite:

“We are seriously KEEPING (not maintaining) A CLOSE EYE (not close eyes) on the compensation claims to ensure all victims are compensated ON TIME (not timely).”

Ah, this treacherous language called English!