What’s the difference between a pronoun and a preposition?

Pronouns are useful because writers can avoid using characters’ names repeatedly and replace them instead with pronouns.  At the same time, it can be confusing if a paragraph is filled with many uses of she when there is more than one girl or woman in the story.  Writers must be careful to clarify which pronoun refers to which person.

Prepositions are another part of speech which can cause problems.  Sometimes writers get into a rut where they use too many prepositional phrases – “The man drove over the hill, through the woods, under the bridge, into the forest, around the rock.”  Each of those phrases begins with a preposition (over, through, under, into, around) and ends with a noun (which is called the object of the preposition).  Many times professors will ask students to revise their essays or stories by going through and removing as many of the prepositions as possible.  Strong writing depends more on unique verbs to express what the prepositional phrases said.