Differences between "off" and "of"

The preposition "of" is most commonly used as a function word to indicate a point of reckoning, origin, derivation, or cause. There are many, many uses of the word "of", and some examples of the above would be:

1. North of the lake
2. Man of noble birth
3. I died of plague

It can also be used to indicate possession, objects of an action, and about 20 other things. Check out the dictionary for different examples.

As a side note, it is also commonly used as a verbal auxiliary to replace "'ve" in contractions, which is incorrect, but used in literature to denote a lack of education or colloquial speech. Ex: I could of done it, I tells ya.

"Off" on the other hand, can be an adverb, a preposition, an adjective, or a verb. As a verb, it is used as slang for "shoot". As an adverb it denotes from a place or position, as in "the army marched off"; to be divided, as in "the ground marked off into squares"; or to be put into a state of suspension, as in "I turned the engine off".

As an adjective, it means removed, canceled, not functioning, etc. As a preposition, it is used as a function word to indicate physical separation or distance from a specific position, the possession of, the object of an action, or the suspension of an activity.

Ah, the little words are always the slipperiest to define. Will some examples suffice?

Off
Take your shoes off when you enter the house.
The lights were all off.
The cake is done. Turn off the oven.
Wilbur and Marleen broke up. Their wedding is off.
How old is this milk? It tastes a little off.
I'm off tomorrow; I can sleep late.
Come along. We're off to see the Wizard.
His house is a mile off the highway.

Of
The peak of the mountain
I bought a new car today, in spite of its cost.
He's in his last year of school.
I'm tired of your sass.
I don't approve of that.
She has a lot to take care of.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
All of the pencils need sharpening.
Some of the books are missing.

ETA: I always take too long typing my responses!

FennelGiraffe said:

Ah, the little words are always the slipperiest to define. Will some examples suffice?

Off
Take your shoes off when you enter the house.
The lights were all off.
The cake is done. Turn off the oven.
Wilbur and Marleen broke up. Their wedding is off.
How old is this milk? It tastes a little off.
I'm off tomorrow; I can sleep late.
Come along. We're off to see the Wizard.
His house is a mile off the highway.

Of
The peak of the mountain
I bought a new car today, in spite of its cost.
He's in his last year of school.
I'm tired of your sass.
I don't approve of that.
She has a lot to take care of.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
All of the pencils need sharpening.
Some of the books are missing.

ETA: I always take too long typing my responses!

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The third and fourth last examples of "of" are technically structured wrong because you are not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition or at least that's what i've been told.

Actually, there is no grammar rule that states ending a sentence in a preposition is incorrect. It is bad form to end a sentence with a preposition when it is redundant or otherwise unnecessary. For example: Where is it at? The at is unnecessary and should be eliminated.

semilargeintestine said:

Actually, there is no grammar rule that states ending a sentence in a preposition is incorrect. It is bad form to end a sentence with a preposition when it is redundant or otherwise unnecessary. For example: Where is it at? The at is unnecessary and should be eliminated.

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And the person who uses it should be flogged. I hate that usage of at.

Haha. I had a friend when I was in Israel who used to hate people who placed unnecessary prepositions at the end of sentences. People would always say, "Where's it at?" and she would go nuts. It annoyed me too, but I found it quite entertaining.

priggy said:

The third and fourth last examples of "of" are technically structured wrong because you are not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition or at least that's what i've been told.

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I think the fourth from the bottom is a phrasal verb, thus requiring the preposition. "To take care" has a different meaning from "to take care of".

That's absolutely correct. It doesn't necessarily require a preposition, as in some cases it is a verb plus an adverb as opposed to a verb plus a preposition. You're still right though.

This thread is the saddest I've read in a long time.

Mr. Chuckletrousers said:

I think the fourth from the bottom is a phrasal verb, thus requiring the preposition. "To take care" has a different meaning from "to take care of".

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semilargeintestine said:

That's absolutely correct. It doesn't necessarily require a preposition, as in some cases it is a verb plus an adverb as opposed to a verb plus a preposition. You're still right though.

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Well, "of" is a preposition in "She has a lot to take care of." The prepositional object of "of" is "a lot".

The "correct" version of that sentence would be:

I doubt many people would say that, but it's a grammatically correct variant and the one to use if you want to avoid sentence-final (really: clause-final) prepositions.

This is different from:

Which I cannot transform into:

See the difference?

The famous line attributed to Churchill has both types of preposition (or a preposition and an adverb, taking the intestine's terminology):

This is ungrammatical, and basically a rhetorical trick, too, as the people who dislike dangling prepositions call "up" an adverb, so the "correct" version would be:

Basically, I think the world would be a better place if everybody would just forget the "rule" about "not ending a sentence with a preposition." English doesn't really need left-overs from Latin grammar.

Dawnstorm said:

The "correct" version of that sentence would be:


She has a lot of which to take care.

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Actually, it's "a correct version," not "the correct version." Both "She has a lot of which to take care" and "She has a lot to take care of" are "correct," if somewhat lazily worded.

Dawnstorm said:

Basically, I think the world would be a better place if everybody would just forget the "rule" about "not ending a sentence with a preposition." English doesn't really need left-overs from Latin grammar.

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Since it's not really a rule at all, amen.

Once again, there is no rule. Like Chase said, what you put was correct, but it is not "the" correct version. The great thing about English (for people who study it anyway; it sucks if you're trying to learn it) is there are multiple ways to say the same thing.

Chase said:

This thread is the saddest I've read in a long time.

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Yes. Threads like these piss me of.

Prawn said:

Yes. Threads like these piss me of.

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i can't stop laughing. now that was funny! sort off.

Chase said:

Actually, it's "a correct version," not "the correct version." Both "She has a lot of which to take care" and "She has a lot to take care of" are "correct," if somewhat lazily worded.

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Yup, both are correct. But only one is "correct", if you buy the "rule". See where I come from?

semilargeintestine said:

Once again, there is no rule. Like Chase said, what you put was correct, but it is not "the" correct version. The great thing about English (for people who study it anyway; it sucks if you're trying to learn it) is there are multiple ways to say the same thing.

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Again, I agree with the spirit of the post, but not with the letter:

"Once again, there is no rule." -- If only! I agree that there is no generative priniciple in standard English to that effect. No variant of English I know of (of which I know ) has that specific proscription.

But there are people who claim that you can't have prepostions end sentences. There are people who believe those people and edit their own texts accordingly. A more lenient version of the "rule" doesn't place the distinction on the correct/incorrect continuum, but on the formal/informal continuum. Still, if there are people who try to conform to the rule, it is - in effect - a rule.

I do not buy this "rule" at all. I never have and I doubt I ever will. Still, the rule exists in some people's minds, and they're ready to defend it. When they do, they have reasons and rationales. Much as I'd like to, we can't just dismiss them. And if we're going to offer arguments against it, we should make sure we're not attacking strawmen (as the Churchill quote does).

Here's a summary of the relevant strain of discussion from my point of view:

1. Fennel Giraffe gives perfectly good examples of the preposition "of".

2. Priggy ventures that two of them are "technically structured wrong", because he's been told that you musn't end sentences with a preposition.

3. Semilargeintestine says it's not really a grammar rule. (At that point, I'm sitting there, nodding my head, grateful that I don't feel the compulsion to jump into this thread with over-technical and over-detailled posts such as this one. Silly compulsive me!)

4. Mr. Chuckletrousers says that "to take care of" is a phrasal verb, and thus the preposition is needed. Semilargeintestine basically agrees.

5. Dawnstorm disagrees with (4), but in the attempt to restrain himself and keep it simple messes up the post. (The "have to take care of X" --> "have X to take care of" is especially bad; it's a rhetorical trick much like the one I mean to attack - gah! How did this happen?)

So for the one geeky reader who might actually be interested I'm going to summarise the point I failed to make:

The claim is that "to take care of" is a phrasal verb and thus the preposition is needed.

Yes, the preposition is necessary. But this does not necessarily address the question of whether or not the preposition should be allowed to end a sentence. The argument is okay for compound verbs such as "make up":

He made up a story./He made a story up. --[pronoun substitution]--> NOT:He made up it./He made it up.

He took care of George./NOT:He took care George of. --[pronoun substitution]--> He took care of him./NOT:He took care him of.

This is because in "make up" the "up" attaches to the verb ([made up] [a story]), wheres in "take care of" the "of" takes a prepositional object ([take care] [of George]). In other words: "of George" is a prepositional phrase, "up a story" is not. See?

So what's my point? Mr. Chuckletrousers' argument would be fine for sentences such as this one:
It does not, however, necessarily apply to sentences such as this:
To illustrate the difference, consider the fronting of objects for emphasis:

Generally, the "rule" (yes, I know...) against ending a sentence with a preposition is arguing against it as a form of "dangling". A preposition is supposed to come before its object. Since the preposition "up" in "make up" has no object, this is impossible, and thus the "rule" does not apply at all. However, in "take care of" the "of" does have an object; the object fronting above shows that, so the "rule" applies.

Now, why was my post bad and what did I leave out? Well, what I did was transform an infinitival clause into a relative clause. That's not a one-to-one translation like:

The thing is that infinitival clauses do not have a grammatical transformation that allows you to place the preposition before its object. Or, in other words, this is NOT a viable transformation:
I really don't want to go into details here (which would involve, among other things, explaining why traditional grammar would not accept what I've called an infinitival clause as a clause at all, but why it's still useful to think of it as one). A short and catchy way to summarise the point (and not all would agree with it) is this:

The sentence doesn't end with a preposition. It ends with an ellipsis. If you can't see the object after the preposition, that's where the ellipsis is.

Sorry for this long and rambling post. I blame OCD.

KTC said:

i can't stop laughing. now that was funny! sort off.

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Perhaps I should off stayed out of this thread...

Well, I found it interesting. It prompted me to discover that in my idiolect "take care of" has essentially become idiomatic -- i.e. I invariably use those words in that exact order with no intervening words when I wish to express the meaning "X takes care of Y". In fact, the examples you give ("Of George she has taken care" and "George, of whom I have taken care") actually sound wrong to my ear.

I have to agree with Chase and Prawn. With KTC, too.

I'm assuming truelyana is Asian despite her UK address.

Dawnstorm said:

Yup, both are correct. But only one is "correct", if you buy the "rule". See where I come from?



Again, I agree with the spirit of the post, but not with the letter:

"Once again, there is no rule." -- If only! I agree that there is no generative priniciple in standard English to that effect. No variant of English I know of (of which I know ) has that specific proscription.

But there are people who claim that you can't have prepostions end sentences. There are people who believe those people and edit their own texts accordingly. A more lenient version of the "rule" doesn't place the distinction on the correct/incorrect continuum, but on the formal/informal continuum. Still, if there are people who try to conform to the rule, it is - in effect - a rule.

I do not buy this "rule" at all. I never have and I doubt I ever will. Still, the rule exists in some people's minds, and they're ready to defend it. When they do, they have reasons and rationales. Much as I'd like to, we can't just dismiss them. And if we're going to offer arguments against it, we should make sure we're not attacking strawmen (as the Churchill quote does).

Here's a summary of the relevant strain of discussion from my point of view:

1. Fennel Giraffe gives perfectly good examples of the preposition "of".

2. Priggy ventures that two of them are "technically structured wrong", because he's been told that you musn't end sentences with a preposition.

3. Semilargeintestine says it's not really a grammar rule. (At that point, I'm sitting there, nodding my head, grateful that I don't feel the compulsion to jump into this thread with over-technical and over-detailled posts such as this one. Silly compulsive me!)

4. Mr. Chuckletrousers says that "to take care of" is a phrasal verb, and thus the preposition is needed. Semilargeintestine basically agrees.

5. Dawnstorm disagrees with (4), but in the attempt to restrain himself and keep it simple messes up the post. (The "have to take care of X" --> "have X to take care of" is especially bad; it's a rhetorical trick much like the one I mean to attack - gah! How did this happen?)

So for the one geeky reader who might actually be interested I'm going to summarise the point I failed to make:

The claim is that "to take care of" is a phrasal verb and thus the preposition is needed.

Yes, the preposition is necessary. But this does not necessarily address the question of whether or not the preposition should be allowed to end a sentence. The argument is okay for compound verbs such as "make up":

He made up a story./He made a story up. --[pronoun substitution]--> NOT:He made up it./He made it up.

He took care of George./NOT:He took care George of. --[pronoun substitution]--> He took care of him./NOT:He took care him of.

This is because in "make up" the "up" attaches to the verb ([made up] [a story]), wheres in "take care of" the "of" takes a prepositional object ([take care] [of George]). In other words: "of George" is a prepositional phrase, "up a story" is not. See?

So what's my point? Mr. Chuckletrousers' argument would be fine for sentences such as this one:

She has stories to make up.
​

It does not, however, necessarily apply to sentences such as this:

She has a lot to take care of.
​

To illustrate the difference, consider the fronting of objects for emphasis:

Stories she has made up (not puzzles).
NOT: Up stories she has made.

George she has taken care of.
Of George she has taken care.
​

Generally, the "rule" (yes, I know...) against ending a sentence with a preposition is arguing against it as a form of "dangling". A preposition is supposed to come before its object. Since the preposition "up" in "make up" has no object, this is impossible, and thus the "rule" does not apply at all. However, in "take care of" the "of" does have an object; the object fronting above shows that, so the "rule" applies.

Now, why was my post bad and what did I leave out? Well, what I did was transform an infinitival clause into a relative clause. That's not a one-to-one translation like:

This is George, whom I have taken care of. --> This George, of whom I have taken care.
​

The thing is that infinitival clauses do not have a grammatical transformation that allows you to place the preposition before its object. Or, in other words, this is NOT a viable transformation:

She has a lot to take care of. --> She has of a lot to take care.
​

I really don't want to go into details here (which would involve, among other things, explaining why traditional grammar would not accept what I've called an infinitival clause as a clause at all, but why it's still useful to think of it as one). A short and catchy way to summarise the point (and not all would agree with it) is this:

The sentence doesn't end with a preposition. It ends with an ellipsis. If you can't see the object after the preposition, that's where the ellipsis is.

Sorry for this long and rambling post. I blame OCD.



Perhaps I should off stayed out of this thread...

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It doesn't matter if the rule is in their heads. The question is whether or not it is a rule, and it isn't. All of the arguing about why you should or shouldn't is pointless. If you want to try and rework sentences to conform to a "rule" that doesn't exist, go ahead. In fact, I would say that it is better to say "she has a lot to take care of" than the monster up with which you came. I would rather just write or say what flows naturally and make sure I don't have anything unnecessary or incorrect. Prepositions at the ends of sentences are not incorrect unless they are unnecessary (see above examples).

There is no debate here. There is no rule. People can do what they wish with sentences, but the fact remains: there is no rule.

Mr. Chuckletrousers said:

Well, I found it interesting. It prompted me to discover that in my idiolect "take care of" has essentially become idiomatic -- i.e. I invariably use those words in that exact order with no intervening words when I wish to express the meaning "X takes care of Y". In fact, the examples you give ("Of George she has taken care" and "George, of whom I have taken care") actually sound wrong to my ear.

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Well, I wouldn't normally use any of these myself, and I'm sure they're very rare. Googling doesn't find many of them (one's from the 18th Century, another's from a poem...), but occasionally you do come across an example, say, here:

"Unfortunately, my attendance depends largely upon the state of my arthritic back and the health of my folks, of whom I take care.")

Maybe it is rather archaic, these days? Even obsolete? The problem is that object fronting is rare to begin with.

On a whim, I tried "depend on" - more successful.

Okay, on to "to take stock of". Same problem as with "to take care of". Most examples are rather old (or deliberately stilted), as here:

"In the course of February the stores in our supply dumps, of which I took stock every day, ran out." </i>

I wonder what's going on here. Does the addition of a noun into an idiomatic expression change the game? Is the "of" seen as belonging to the noun? I doubt I've ever seen the like of:

I may simply have read too much old stuff. I don't know. It's interesting.

semilargeintestine said:

If you want to try and rework sentences to conform to a "rule" that doesn't exist, go ahead. In fact, I would say that it is better to say "she has a lot to take care of" than the monster up with which you came. I would rather just write or say what flows naturally and make sure I don't have anything unnecessary or incorrect.

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No argument from me. Very practical approach that.

There is no debate here. There is no rule. People can do what they wish with sentences, but the fact remains: there is no rule.

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Fine, then. If you don't like the word rule, will "superstition" do? Or perhaps "stylistic guideline"? "Statement of language taste"?

The point I'm making is that his piece of advice (however misguided) has a history. It also has defenders. And it has a rationale. It's nowadays presented as "Don't end a sentence with a preposition," although that's misleading, since it's not really about sentences. ("Is this the guy you told me about ?" is no better or worse than "Is this the guy you told me about, Joe?", although the second sentence ends with a proper noun, not a preposition.) It's about prepositions preceding the noun-phrase they belong to.

So if you're saying "the monster up with which you came," you're partly attacking the same strawman that Churchill attacked. The correct form would be "the monster with which you came up," and that's because the people who usually propagate said piece of advice realise that "up" isn't tied to any noun-phrase, so the rule doesn't apply. They get away with "no preposition at the end of a sentence," anyway, because they (many of them) call "up" an adverb in this context. (From what you've written so far, I gather you would too; correct me if I'm wrong.)

That I call it a preposition and not an adverb, like Churchill probably would have done, doesn't give me the right to attack the rule on that account, because that's not what they're claiming. But this piece of advice does force them to say "Of which I take care," (unless Mr Chuckletrousers is right about it being idiomatic these days, in which case they have a bail-out option). Actually, that the proscription would force them to make that choice is a very good strike against that proscription, I would say. But I'm not about to take away their right to judge their own writing. (They could also try to argue why I'm wrong and it doesn't force this usage; if they do so convincingly, I've learned something new about language judgement.)

LIfe's too short, I suppose, to bicker over nonsense, but - well - I enjoy it. And I do think that there's value in understanding other people's language judgements properly, even if I happen to think they're wrong. (Interestingly, when I'm arguing with the rule-mongers I'm often accused of not wanting to learn. Go figure.)

Dawnstorm said:

Fine, then. If you don't like the word rule, will "superstition" do? Or perhaps "stylistic guideline"? "Statement of language taste"?

The point I'm making is that his piece of advice (however misguided) has a history. It also has defenders. And it has a rationale. It's nowadays presented as "Don't end a sentence with a preposition," although that's misleading, since it's not really about sentences. ("Is this the guy you told me about ?" is no better or worse than "Is this the guy you told me about, Joe?", although the second sentence ends with a proper noun, not a preposition.) It's about prepositions preceding the noun-phrase they belong to.

So if you're saying "the monster up with which you came," you're partly attacking the same strawman that Churchill attacked. The correct form would be "the monster with which you came up," and that's because the people who usually propagate said piece of advice realise that "up" isn't tied to any noun-phrase, so the rule doesn't apply. They get away with "no preposition at the end of a sentence," anyway, because they (many of them) call "up" an adverb in this context. (From what you've written so far, I gather you would too; correct me if I'm wrong.)

That I call it a preposition and not an adverb, like Churchill probably would have done, doesn't give me the right to attack the rule on that account, because that's not what they're claiming. But this piece of advice does force them to say "Of which I take care," (unless Mr Chuckletrousers is right about it being idiomatic these days, in which case they have a bail-out option). Actually, that the proscription would force them to make that choice is a very good strike against that proscription, I would say. But I'm not about to take away their right to judge their own writing. (They could also try to argue why I'm wrong and it doesn't force this usage; if they do so convincingly, I've learned something new about language judgement.)

LIfe's too short, I suppose, to bicker over nonsense, but - well - I enjoy it. And I do think that there's value in understanding other people's language judgements properly, even if I happen to think they're wrong. (Interestingly, when I'm arguing with the rule-mongers I'm often accused of not wanting to learn. Go figure.)

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There's nothing wrong with bickering over nonsense. I was being "cute" with my monster sentence. My whole thing is with people who refuse to admit that ending a sentence with a preposition is okay. I know that's not you, so don't think I'm attacking you.

I love debating, and I definitely love discussing and debating grammar and syntax. I'll talk all day about which one is better, which one is more aesthetically pleasing, etc. I just won't debate whether or not it's correct, because there's no debate.

Dawnstorm said:

Fine, then. If you don't like the word rule, will "superstition" do? Or perhaps "stylistic guideline"? "Statement of language taste"?

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I think you've uncovered the problem, Dawn. The idea of giving rule status, even "rule" status in quotations, to superstitions such as "never begin sentences with and or but," "never use an exclamation mark or adverb," or "never use any attributive other than 'said'" causes problems for inexperienced writers and critiquers.

Another of the many bogus rules is that "in-the-head" third-person very limited narration is the only allowable third person POV.

It's popular, I'll grant, but the fad is certainly no binding rule for writers.

semilargeintestine said:

There's nothing wrong with bickering over nonsense. I was being "cute" with my monster sentence. My whole thing is with people who refuse to admit that ending a sentence with a preposition is okay. I know that's not you, so don't think I'm attacking you.

I love debating, and I definitely love discussing and debating grammar and syntax. I'll talk all day about which one is better, which one is more aesthetically pleasing, etc. I just won't debate whether or not it's correct, because there's no debate.

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Heh, don't worry. I got that you're not attacking me. But over the years I've become quite self-conscious about my rather theory heavy posts. It's a bit of a tight-rope act, and sometimes the rope I'm walking on looks like a noose.

Chase said:

I think you've uncovered the problem, Dawn. The idea of giving rule status, even "rule" status in quotations, to superstitions such as "never begin sentences with and or but," "never use an exclamation mark or adverb," or "never use any attributive other than 'said'" causes problems for inexperienced writers and critiquers.

Another of the many bogus rules is that "in-the-head" third-person very limited narration is the only allowable third person POV.

It's popular, I'll grant, but the fad is certainly no binding rule for writers.

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Would you buy this book:

Proposal

notes

A book about advice books!

Dawnstorm said:

Well, I wouldn't normally use any of these myself, and I'm sure they're very rare. Googling doesn't find many of them (one's from the 18th Century, another's from a poem...), but occasionally you do come across an example, say, here:

"Unfortunately, my attendance depends largely upon the state of my arthritic back and the health of my folks, of whom I take care.")

Maybe it is rather archaic, these days? Even obsolete? The problem is that object fronting is rare to begin with.

On a whim, I tried "depend on" - more successful.

Okay, on to "to take stock of". Same problem as with "to take care of". Most examples are rather old (or deliberately stilted), as here:

"In the course of February the stores in our supply dumps, of which I took stock every day, ran out." </i>

I wonder what's going on here. Does the addition of a noun into an idiomatic expression change the game? Is the "of" seen as belonging to the noun? I doubt I've ever seen the like of:

NO: Care of whom I took.
​

I may simply have read too much old stuff. I don't know. It's interesting.

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Compare:

I put the spoons in the drawer.
The drawer I put the spoons in.
The drawer in which I put the spoons.

Here we have something similar to "take care of" -- a verb with a direct object and a prepositional object (unless "take care of" is a serial verb, where both 'take' and 'care' are verbs, like "go get me a drink", but I don't think it is). Yet I have absolutely no problem with the third sentence -- it sounds right to me. Perhaps this is because "to put X __" can take several different prepositions ('in', 'on', 'under' etc), while "take care __" can only take one preposition -- 'of'.* If one always hears the same three words in the same order then, possibly, it starts to become idiomatic, unlike with "put" where you don't always hear the same three words.

* There are sentences like "take care +infinitive", such as "take care to avoid X" and "take care to protect X", but an infinitive is not a PP.

For what it's worth, this dictionary seems to agree with me that "take care of" is an idiom.