Misuse of Prepositions

"an organization headquartered in downtown Cleveland that has been unusually successful in helping struggling Ohioans to hold onto their homes. " Sentence found in today's New York Times. Italics are mine.


I've seen this usage so frequently in the Times that I wondered whether the rule had changed. I checked my trusty Collegiate Dictionary and found . . . nope, it has not changed. The proper verb in question here is to hold on, which means that when you want to hold on to something, you do not hold onto it. In writing, this misuse of the preposition with the verb is probably one of the most common there is. I cannot say how many times I've seen it handled the wrong way. I suppose what was shocking to me was that the Times misuses it frequently. Are their copy editors brain dead or what?


Another one that squeezes bile out of my brain is oblivious to. The proper preposition to use with oblivious is of. You are oblivious of the suffering of the poor. This one is from Roger Cohen's editorial in today's Times: "against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat." Italics are mine. 


Another often misused construction is different than. Now I admit that sometimes even I find it hard, when making a comparison, to not want to use this construction, so maybe someday it'll change, but right now it is still different from. This house is different from the one next door. In a more complex comparison, though, the changes in wording one must make to use the correct formation lead to wordiness, and it's in these places where I wonder why I can't say the former rather than the latter, simply for the sake of economy of words. So maybe it'll eventually change. But then again, maybe it won't. In the forty years I've been working with print the rule hasn't changed.


I'm starting this entry early in the day. No doubt as the day goes along I'll find more bad constructions and add them. There is another wonderful reference work I haven't mentioned, Words Into Type. Whenever I want to double-check the right preposition to use, WIT has a wonderful list of them and I turn right to it. If you don't have this book, get it. Save yourself the embarrassment of using the wrong preposition. Will other people notice? Maybe yes, maybe no. And since you don't know which ones know the correct usage and which ones don't, it's better to be right than wrong.