Prepositions (e.g. for, to, with, of, in, etc.) help us lengthen our sentences. One thing is for certain: They need help themselves, for they are not meant to stand alone. This fact translates into lengthy sentence constructions, an aspect in our writing that we want to eliminate – within reasonable limits, of course. By making sure to decrease the number of prepositions and the words that tag along with them, we can compact our sentences to a significant degree. We must keep in mind that one word can replace an entire prepositional phrase. How can we achieve such an outcome? By resorting to the possessive. A preposition-rich example: The teaching style of the new instructor soon became a hit among the seniors of our school. The same sample sentence, after the replacement of the prepositions by possessives: The new instructor’s teaching style soon became a hit among our school’s seniors.
