5 Ways to Work Your Way Around the Weak With

5 Ways to Work Your Way Around the Weak With 5 Ways to Work Your Way Around the Weak â€Å"With† 5 Ways to Work Your Way Around the Weak â€Å"With† By Mark Nichol The preposition with is one of the workhorses of the English language, performing multiple functions, but it’s not a very powerful beast of burden. Writers often put it to work at the wrong task, employing it to link one phrase or another when a stronger word or phrase, or a form of punctuation, is much more structurally sound. Here are five examples of sentences better expressed without with: 1. â€Å"Requirements concerning the marital status of adopting couples are not uniform, with a stable relationship being required in most cases.† Omit with, split the sentence into two, and add, to signal contrast, the conjunction however: â€Å"Requirements concerning the marital status of adopting couples are not uniform. A stable relationship, however, is required in most cases. 2. â€Å"Governance by committee is the norm, with 67 percent of large companies having committees of senior business leaders that oversee and prioritize information-technology investments.† If what follows with is a definition or expansion, use a colon in its place: â€Å"Governance by committee is the norm: 67 percent of large companies have committees of senior business leaders that oversee and prioritize information-technology investments.† 3. â€Å"The debate largely focused on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion with Kerry attacking Bush’s decisions and Bush accusing Kerry of shifting views.† As is, this sentence is clumsily breathless, but rather than simply inserting a missing comma after invasion, try a semicolon instead and delete with: â€Å"The debate largely focused on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion; Kerry attacked Bush’s decisions, and Bush accused Kerry of shifting views.† 4. â€Å"Each year, more than 1 million children are poisoned in their own homes, with thousands receiving permanent or chronic injuries.† Make the sentence a simple compound by replacing with with and, and alter the following subject and verb as necessary: â€Å"Each year, more than 1 million children are poisoned in their own homes, and thousands of them receive permanent or chronic injuries.† 5. â€Å"Most Fortune 500 companies have hundreds of incidents per year, with only a small percentage of those incidents resulting in significant financial loss.† Select, in place of with, another conjunction that is appropriate for the context, and change the form of the subsequent verb: â€Å"Most Fortune 500 companies have hundreds of incidents per year, although only a small percentage of those incidents result in significant financial loss.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Words for Facial ExpressionsLoan, Lend, Loaned, Lent50 Synonyms for â€Å"Villain†