Ways To Use the Preposition "By" | Learn English Grammar for Beginners

Hi everybody, my name is Alicia. In this lesson, we're going to look at 10 different ways to use the preposition by. I'm going to cover some of the most important and most common uses of this preposition, but of course there

are some other uses such as phrasal verbs and in idioms and so on. Today, we're going to look at 10 very important and very great to know uses of this preposition. Let's get started.

Okay. First, let's look at this one. Number one here. This is the use of by to mean near or close, referring to its position from you.

So, for example, he lives by the park. He lives by the park. In this sentence, we could replace by with near or close and the sentence would remain the same. The meaning would remain the same.

He lives near the park or he lives close to the park. Same thing with our next example. My bag is by the door. My bag is by the door.

So, my bag is near the door or my bag is close to the door. Last example, she put her coffee by the computer. She put her coffee by the computer. Again, this means near.

She put her coffee near the computer. So, all of these refer to by as meaning close to something else. Okay, let's move on to the second use. The second use is to describe the method of travel.

So, we use this by along with a way of getting somewhere like a bus, an airplane, being on foot, and so on. Here are examples. We went by bus.

We went by bus. So, by comes before the method of transportation. In this case, bus is our method. We went by bus. Second example, I've never traveled by train before.

I've never traveled by train before. Again, by comes before the transportation type here. Okay? Last example, she's coming by car. She's coming by car.

So, again, we have car here, our method of transportation, and in front of that is by. She's coming by car. Please note the only time that we don't use this is when we're talking about traveling on our feet.

When we talk about traveling on foot, we use the expression on foot. So, it's about 10 minutes on foot. We don't say by foot or by walking, really. We say on foot.

So, this is a special exception to this one. If you're talking about buses, trains, cars, and bicycles, and so on, you can use this by method. Okay, let's go on to number three. Number three is also about a method, but it's a

little more open. We use by to describe methods of doing things. So, there are two kinds of breakdowns that I want to talk about here. The first one is using by before an i n

g word. So, this is a way of expressing the process of something. Let's look at some examples. First, turn on the car by pressing this button.

Turn on the car by pressing this button. So, in this situation, we have by before this i n g word, by pressing. So, this sentence is saying you can turn on the car if you do this action.