Preposition vs. Conjunction — What's the Difference?

A word used to show the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word.

Shows causality or reason.

Functions as a bridge in a sentence.

A word that connects phrases, words, or clauses.

Often used to indicate direction.

Introduces an alternative or choice.

Can show possession.

Helps in building complex sentences.

Expresses temporal, spatial, or logical relationship.

Can contrast or compare.

A word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in ‘the man on the platform’, ‘she arrived after dinner’, ‘what did you do it for?’.

The act of joining.

A word or phrase placed typically before a substantive and indicating the relation of that substantive to a verb, an adjective, or another substantive, as English at, by, with, from, and in regard to.

The state of being joined.

To position or place in position in advance

A joint or simultaneous occurrence; concurrence

Any of a class of non-inflecting words typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word: a particle used with a noun or pronoun (in English always in the objective case) to make a phrase limiting some other word.

One resulting from or embodying a union; a combination

An adposition.

The part of speech that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.

(obsolete) A proposition; an exposition; a discourse.

Any of the words belonging to this part of speech, such as and, but, as, and because.

To place in a location before some other event occurs.

(Astronomy) The position of two celestial objects when they have the same celestial longitude. As viewed from Earth, two objects in conjunction will appear to be close to each other in the sky.

A word employed to connect a noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word; a particle used with a noun or pronoun (in English always in the objective case) to make a phrase limiting some other word; - so called because usually placed before the word with which it is phrased; as, a bridge of iron; he comes from town; it is good for food; he escaped by running.

A compound proposition that has components joined by the word and or its symbol and is true only if both or all the components are true.

A proposition; an exposition; a discourse.

The relationship between the components of a conjunction.

A function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word

The act of joining, or condition of being joined.

(linguistics) the placing of one linguistic element before another (as placing a modifier before the word it modifies in a sentence or placing an affix before the base to which it is attached)

(grammar) A word used to join other words or phrases together into sentences. The specific conjunction used shows how the two joined parts are related.

Cooccurrence; coincidence.

(astronomy) The alignment of two bodies in the solar system such that they have the same longitude when seen from Earth.

(astrology) An aspect in which planets are in close proximity to one another.

(logic) The proposition resulting from the combination of two or more propositions using the ∧ ($\backslash and$) operator.

A place where multiple things meet

The act of conjoining, or the state of being conjoined, united, or associated; union; association; league.

A connective or connecting word; an indeclinable word which serves to join together sentences, clauses of a sentence, or words; as, and, but, if.

The temporal property of two things happening at the same time;

The state of being joined together

An uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences

The grammatical relation between linguistic units (words or phrases or clauses) that are connected by a conjunction

(astronomy) apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same degree of the zodiac

Something that joins or connects

Prepositions typically do not alter the sentence structure but provide clarifying details.

Examples include "in," "at," "by," and "with."

Examples include "and," "but," "or," and "because."

A preposition is a part of speech that indicates the relationship of a noun or pronoun to other parts of the sentence.

A conjunction is a word that connects clauses or sentences or coordinates words in the same clause.

Compound prepositions consist of more than one word, such as "according to."

Yes, prepositions typically require an object to complete their phrase.

Correct use of prepositions is crucial for clear communication and precise meaning.

Yes, some words can function both ways, depending on usage.

Conjunctions can significantly alter the structure by connecting different clauses.

In spoken English, prepositions often end sentences.

No, conjunctions do not have objects but connect sentence elements.

These are pairs like "either...or" and "neither...nor" that work together in a sentence.