About and On: What's The Difference?

About and on are two prepositions that have very similar use cases and it can be easy to get confused between the two.

The main difference between these two propositions is relatively easy, compare the sentences:

• The book is about a girl who follows a rabbit down a hole and has a crazy adventure (Alice in Wonderland, which you should read!).

• The lecture was on the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

So both prepositions are indicating the subject matter of something, in this case a novel and a lecture. We use about to talk about more ordinary things and on is to indicate more serious or subject matter.

If we are recounting a plot, like we did for Alice In Wonderland, then we should always use about.

Let's look at some other uses for 'about' and 'on' and we will start with verb + preposition collocations. These are verbs that just always go with about and it doesn't matter what tense the verb is in:

So these collocations you just need to try to practice, they might be different than the literal translations of the prepositions in your language, and that's ok, often prepositions are different from language to language so you shouldn't try to translate them.

Remember, the best way to acquire grammar is through reading and listening and trying to 'notice' when you hear or read some grammar that surprises you, this could be something like saying the sentence out loud or writing it down.

One more bonus usage involving about is about to which is used to say that you are going to do something in the next moment or very soon. For instance:

• I'm just about to go to the shops, do you want anything?

Not about to means that you don't want to or don't intend to do something.

• I'm not about to spend 20k on a new car when I can get a used car for 5k.