Okay, explanation time.
This question grew out of a discussion I had with my professor while working on my novel this semester. One week I met with her and as she read, she took the sentance I had written, casually crossed out an 'on' and wrote a 'by' above it. (I had written that Caleb had discovered something 'completely on accident.') It was a simple change, but it sparked a discussion -- I had written 'on' unconsciously and 'by' sounded really, really
wrong to me.
She said that she had thought it was a quirky habit only her daughter had. But she had no clue where her daughter had gotten it from. So I started trying to figure out
why I said 'on.' And I've been asking people all over the place which one they use -- language is constantly changing, so is this a shift that will take hold, like ending on prepositions seems to have done?
I also tried to figure out
why the shift happened in the first place (if it is a shift and not just some teenage thing like 'like' and 'you know'...which have both spread to a lot of adults I know...). Here are my theories:
1. We say that something is '
an accident.' When speaking, "It was an accident" sounds very similar to "It was on accident." Which is easily transferred to "I did it on accident."
2. When we do things purposefully, we say we do them
on purpose. And yet, we do them
by accident. What gives?
and still say 'on accident' in my speech. What can I say?
I'm used to it.
My prof thinks it might be my generation that says it. But where did we get if from? So, for the other four who voted for
on, would you mind saying your rough age group and rough location? Maybe it's a location thing, in addition to or instead of an age thing.
Thanks to everyone who participated. I guess I really am in the minority...or maybe the high proportion of writers here just proves that you all have better grammar than the average population.
Bethy