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When To Use In, On and at Pertaining To Date and Time

This document provides a grammar lesson on using the prepositions "in", "on", and "at" to indicate time. It explains that "in" is used for longer periods like months, years, decades, centuries, and seasons. "On" is used for days and dates. "At" is used for particular times, including clock times, midday/midnight, mealtimes, sunrise/sunset, night, religious festivals, and weekends. Examples are given for each use, along with pictures to help with memorization. A printable PDF of the full lesson and exercises is also offered.

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Dwight Jenna de Mesa
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27 views

When To Use In, On and at Pertaining To Date and Time

This document provides a grammar lesson on using the prepositions "in", "on", and "at" to indicate time. It explains that "in" is used for longer periods like months, years, decades, centuries, and seasons. "On" is used for days and dates. "At" is used for particular times, including clock times, midday/midnight, mealtimes, sunrise/sunset, night, religious festivals, and weekends. Examples are given for each use, along with pictures to help with memorization. A printable PDF of the full lesson and exercises is also offered.

Uploaded by

Dwight Jenna de Mesa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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In, At, On + Time or Date

When is your birthday? Mine is ON October 12. When do you eat lunch? I usually eat it AT
noon. When does the school year begin in your country? In mine it begins IN September.

Do you know which preposition to use before times, days, months and years? Here is a reminder.

Don't forget to use...

in + month or year- In March, In 2003

on + date (with the year or without it) or day of the week- On April 2,
On March 3, 1999, On Saturday

at + clock time, midnight, noon- At 3:30 p.m., At 4:01, At noon

Remember also...

in + season- In the summer, In the winter

in + morning, afternoon, evening- In the morning, In the evening

at + night- At night

In, On, At: Time

Grammar Summary:
Grammar lesson on the uses of the prepositions: "In", "On" and "At" for time. Comes
with revision PDF to download. Also see the Practice Exercise on this subject.

< Back to lessons

Printable PDFs for this lesson:

Video Exercise 1
PDF Exercise 2
PDF Handout
In this lesson we’re going to look at the prepositions: In, On, and At for time.

For example if we say in June, or on Friday, or at night, we are thinking about time.

We’re going to look at 16 examples in this lesson; 7 of those are for In, 2 are for On
and 7 are for At. So let’s get started with In.

i) Using “In”

We use in for longer periods.

There are 5 examples on this page and each example has a picture to help you
remember in future.

Number 1; "in June"; we've seen already; and this shows us that we can use in for
months. So, "in June", "in July", "in August" and so on.  

Number 2 shows us that we can use in for years.  The example here is "in 2006". We
could also say "in 1996, in 2016" or in whatever year.

Number 3 and this picture represents a particular decade. The example here is: "in the
60s". We could also say "in the 70s" or "in the 80s" or whatever decade.

Number 4. This picture represents a particular century. The example here is "in the
18th century" we could also say "in the 19th century", "in the 20th century" and so on.

Number 5. This picture represents a particular season. The example here is "in
summer". We could also have "in winter", or "in Autumn" or "in Spring".

Now as I said before, we normally use In for longer periods, like months, years,
decades, centuries and seasons. There are 2 more examples I want to show you which
are not for longer periods.

Number 6 first, and this is "in" for a time in the future. The example is: "I'll do it in 5
minutes". What this means is "I'll do it 5 minutes from now". We could also say in 2
hours or in 5 days or whatever time.

Finally, Number 7, is "in" for time needed. We can use the same example as before, "I'll
do it in 5 minutes", except here, it means something completely different.

Here it means "I need" or "it will take me" 5 minutes to do the job or the task that I'm
talking about. And again, we can say in 2 hours or in 5 days or whatever time we're
talking about.

So that's "in". Let's go now to "on".

ii) Using “On”

We use "on" for days and dates. Two examples here.

Number 1, "on Friday", shows us that we can use "on" for days of the week. We could
also say "on Saturday" or "on Sunday" or on whatever day.

Number 2 is dates in the year, and the example is "on 23rd March", although speakers
of American English will probably say "March 23rd" without the "on".

So that's "on": days and dates. Let's go finally to "at".

iii) Using “At”

And we use "at" for talking about particular times. 6 examples on this page.

Number 1, "at 6 o'clock", shows that we can use "at" for times of day. We could also
say "at 7.30", or "at 10.45" or whatever time.

Number 2 is "at midday" or "at midnight", again times of day.

Number 3 shows we use "at" for mealtimes. The example here is "at lunch". We could
also have "at breakfast" or "at dinner".

Number 4 is "at sunrise" or "at sunset".

Number 5 is "at night". Be careful here because we can't say "at day". Instead, we
would probably say "during" the day.

And Number 6 shows we can use "at" for religious festivals. The picture example here is
"at Christmas". We could also say "at Eid" or "at Vesach" or "at Diwali", and so on.
Now I said before that we can use "at" for particular times, like times of day, at midday
/ midnight, at mealtimes, at sunrise / sunset, at night and at religious festivals.

I want to show you one final example, and this is Number 7: "at the weekend" (two
people lying on the grass), although in American English, we would probably say "on
the weekend".

So that's the end of Part 1; here is the PDF which you can download. As you can see it
has all the examples for In, On, At for time plus the pictures to make them easier to
remember.

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