Timeline for in/at a bank for different purposes [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 8, 2022 at 11:08 | history | closed |
ColleenV mdewey Richard Winters None Mari-Lou A |
Duplicate of Should I say "She is in the park" or "She is at the park"? | |
| Dec 16, 2021 at 9:43 | vote | accept | Antonia A | ||
| Dec 13, 2021 at 20:18 | comment | added | FeliniusRex - gone | It is uncommon even in spoken language to say "I am at a...." because locations are always unique places. One bank is very different than another bank. | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 17:32 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @OldBrixtonian: I didn't think it was surprising that I am at a bank should be significantly less common than the other 3 permutations of at/in, a/the. If it hadn't produced zero results for that combination, I might have just prepended/appended another word (such as but) to the search strings to force that result. I fully expected that permutation to be less common than the others, so there was likely to be a search string just good enough to find the others, but not that one. I'm not saying it's somehow "invalid", obviously - just less common. | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 17:22 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 8, 2022 at 11:08 | |||||
| Dec 13, 2021 at 16:11 | comment | added | stangdon | It depends a lot on context. "I'm at a bank" could be an answer to "Where do you work?", or it could be an answer to "Where are you right now?" | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 15:51 | comment | added | Old Brixtonian | That's a surprising Ngram result. This one shows it existing only in the past tense. So maybe it's to do with Ngram recording only printed usages. A TV news reporter standing outside a bank might well say, "I'm at a bank". A newspaper reporter would write, "I was at a bank". | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 15:33 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Ngrams not found: I am at a bank, so what you were told is perfectly correct. The other 3 permutations of in / at and the / a are all perfectly common. But there's no particular reason to assume any permutation is more or less likely depending on any of the factors you've listed. You should just think of them as alternative phrasings that all mean exactly the same thing (so it's a "stylistic choice"). | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 15:28 | answer | added | Old Brixtonian | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 15:21 | answer | added | Jiaze Zhang | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 14:55 | history | asked | Antonia A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |