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Report Writing: Prepositional Phrases to Describe Change

20 Jun 2021

When writing reports or proposals it’s often necessary to describe change, i.e. when and by how much something changed. When doing this you will also need to know how to accurately use prepositional phrases. See the table below:

Preposition Examples
at to describe static situations. Sales peaked at $25 million
verb + by + change Sales increased by $2 million.
Turnover fell by 20%.
noun + of + change Sales reached a high of $25 million.
This was a rise of 10%
in to describe the area affected by change/time period. Last year there was a rise in net sales.
20xx saw a 15% fall in exports.
in + month, year, quarter, etc in June
in the first quarter
in 20xx
from (specific time) to (specific time) from June to August
from 20xx to 20xx
between (specific time) to (specific time) between June and August
between 20xx and 20xx
 

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