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I am an Indian, non native speaker of English.

I was searching for a website/online tool which can validate English sentence for the below.

  • Grammatical mistakes
  • Meaning of that sentence, it is ok to get the meaning in English itself.

I found scribens, but I am not sure that site is working properly, because most of the it says as 'correct text', as per scribens all 3 sentences below are correct. (I am not sure about it)

I am working at Toronto.
I am working in Toronto.
I am working on Toronto.

Is the tool working correctly? Can all of these be correct?

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  • English Language Learners is in fact the site you're looking for! :) However, an automated online syntax checker wouldn't necessarily be a good idea anyway. All three prepositions are perfectly valid in the appropriate context (which frankly I don't believe today's software could possibly understand even if you gave it), so even if you do find a site that tells you only one version is "correct", that'll be an unreliable resource anyway. Commented May 31, 2019 at 17:35
  • Thanks FumbleFingers for your comment especially, I don't believe today's software could possibly understand
    – NiceGuy
    Commented May 31, 2019 at 18:04
  • As for finding a tool to help you, let me give you a link to our Resources for Learning English thread on our meta site. Questions like, "What is a good tool?" are considered off-topic, but questions you encounter while using such tools are most definitely on topic, which is why I altered your question a little bit.
    – J.R.
    Commented May 31, 2019 at 20:48
  • Thanks or the updates J.R
    – NiceGuy
    Commented May 31, 2019 at 21:03

1 Answer 1

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Looking at your three sentences, the most likely scenario would be that the speaker has a job in the within the city limits of Toronto, so the speaker would want to say:

I am working in Toronto.

However, we can use the preposition at when talking about the company or business where we work:

I work at IBM. My friend Greg works at Google. My father-in-law works at General Motors.

Remember, Toronto is a proper noun, and it could conceivably take on other meanings besides the name of a large city in Ontario. "Toronto" could also be the name of a business (or perhaps the shortened name of a business, such as "Toronto Moving Company"). If there were, in fact, a business named Toronto Moving Company, and you were talking to three long-distance truckers, then it might sound perfectly normal for one of those truckers to say:

George works at Moon Star and Dan works at Hunt. I am working at Toronto.

My next example might be a bit more far-fetched, but let's pretend the computer science department at McGill University was taking part in a robotics competition. They've decided to name their five robots after cities in Canada: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Winnipeg (those last three are sometimes called Monte, Eddie, and Winnie for short). During the competition, two of the robots begin malfunctioning. One of the students approaches the lead engineer and says:

Can you work on Eddie? He's not getting his instructions.

And the lead engineer might reply:

I am working on Toronto. See if you can get Kate to work on Eddie.

Without any way of knowing what information those three sentences are trying to convey, the tool has (correctly, in my opinion) said that they are all valid sentences. However, assuming you are trying to tell us the city where you work, the one you would want to use is the one with in:

I am working in Toronto.

This is why we often press people at ELL to be sure to provide sufficient context. Asking, "Which one of these is correct?" might get a long answer explaining why all of your options might be correct. Asking something more along the lines of, "Which one of these is the best way to tell someone that I am working at a company located in Toronto?" is more likely to give you the answer you are looking for.

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