Many people speaking publicly and a significant proportion of those writing for the public no longer know which preposition goes with which noun or even what the particular words mean. Since prepositions like to, by, with and over are link words rather than key nouns and verbs, some might say: “So what?” The only answer to that is the worth of good expression and accurate meaning. (Most of these short link words can be prepositions, adverbs, adjectives or conjunctions in particular constructions. I will not attempt to differentiate between them.) Diana Hacker, in Rules for Writers, says:  A preposition is…