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When talking to my friend who tells me that he's sleepy, I want to tell him that I hope that he slept good at /in (last) night. What is the correct way to say it?

1) I hope you slept well at night.

2) I hope you slept well in night.

3) I hope you slept well at the last night.

4) I hope you slept well in the last night.

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    You slept well last night/in the night/during th night. You cannot say "at night". You use this phrase when you are talking about something that happens regularly every night.
    – Khan
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 15:01

1 Answer 1

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None of the mentioned alternative, that's how you should say:

I hope you slept well last night

When using last night, which is a period of time, no preposition is necessary, at/on/in, none of them will be used before last night, and it also works for others periods of time: last month, last day, last week..

Others examples:

I hope you did well in the job interview last week

I hope he gave you the present I made for you last month

I hope you looked after my son as I was out last hour

As you can see, no preposition is used before a period of time that includes the word "last".

And if you are talking this night, it doesn't take preposition too, see: I hope you slept well this night. = This night = today's night

You are only allowed to use prepositions in that sentence if you are talking about a night, not a specific one, from which a period of time hasn't been mentioned, see: I hope you sleep good at night/morning/evening.

The night in here is very cold, I hope you sleep well at night.

The morning here is very hot, I hope you can sleep well at morning.

John and Peter can't sleep at night because the night is cold, I hope they get used to this.

Thanks for Araucaria for pointing out some mistakes.

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    "... as I was out last hour" isn't British English. You could say "... as I was out for the last hour" or "...while I was out for the last hour" or ".. as I have been out for the last hour".
    – alephzero
    Commented Dec 29, 2016 at 14:26
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    I just wanted to reinforce @Araucaria's message. You cannot simply use last day as a direct substitute for yesterday. It's incorrect. Nobody says it. You can use it with articles (a, an, the) and prepositions to construct more complex phrases. ("Over the last day, I received fifty-five separate phone calls.")
    – MJ713
    Commented Dec 29, 2016 at 20:33
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    Even though I agree with @Araucaria that it looks much better now, I still don't like your attempt at generalizing the usage and boiling it down to this rule much: "You are only allowed to use prepositions in that sentence if you are talking about night in general, when no particular night has been specified." -- It's not exactly wrong, but strictly speaking, it's wrong, and thus, it's a bit misleading. Here is a counter-example: I hope you slept well during that night. Commented Dec 29, 2016 at 21:08
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    Your rollback of my edit has reintroduced some errors: at morning should be in the morning, last hour should be an hour ago (or perhaps in the last hour), and last day cannot be used in the same way as last week or last month; it should be yesterday unless you are constructing a more complex phrase ("In the last day", "the last day of school", etc.).
    – MJ713
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 15:37
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    I don't have enough rep to edit, but this answer still does not sound like idiomatic AmE to me. Maybe it's idiomatic BrE, but in that case it should be indicated as such. Aside from the comma splices that are driving me crazy, there are phrases such as "at morning" and "at evening" that I have never heard.
    – shoover
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 18:28

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