Timeline for "On a course" vs "In a course" in American English
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
4 events
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| Sep 9, 2022 at 20:36 | comment | added | OpenAI was the last straw | @tkp As a native speaker of AmE, I think I would only ever say that I "have been in a course" to indicate something unusual, perhaps that I started a course but didn't finish. Otherwise I would say that I "have taken a course" or just that I "took a course." | |
| Oct 21, 2021 at 14:22 | comment | added | user8719 | One exception I did find was where the notion of "sitting in" was also involved. I found several instances of "... sit in on a course" and, for obvious reasons, no instances of "sit in in a course" | |
| Oct 21, 2021 at 14:19 | comment | added | user8719 | I'm a Brit, but I've lived in the US for over a decade so I feel I have a decent grasp of AE vs BE differences. As a result, I didn't buy this answer at first. However, I did some googling and to my surprise I found that Jeffrey is correct. Even past expressions like "been on/in a course" seem to be pretty much exclusively the "in" form in AE. To say that I have "been in a course" just sounds daft to my BE ears, but I found it, and not the "on" form on several US university sites. Whodathunk! | |
| Oct 21, 2021 at 9:39 | history | answered | Jeffrey Carney | CC BY-SA 4.0 |