21 Grammatical Mistakes That People Absolutely HATE

21.

And finally, this in-depth explanation: “‘On accident’ vs ‘by accident.’ And if anyone reading this doesn’t understand why, it’s just the wrong preposition. ‘By accident’ is short for ‘by way of accident.’ It’s how/why you came to the situation. ‘How did you get here?’ ‘By way of car.’ ‘Why is there a giant mess?’ It happened by way of accident.’

“‘On accident’ doesn’t make any sense because ‘on’ as a preposition tends to mean a state of being. It’s similar to ‘on brand’ or ‘on my way.’ ‘On purpose’ is the same thing. It’s intended to describe your state of being, not how you arrived there. You could almost substitute it with the word ‘with’ and it would almost have the same meaning, but not quite — but it helps illustrate the point.

On top of that, ‘on purpose’ and ‘by accident’ aren’t even direct opposites, in case you’re thinking that they are and you should be able to swap prepositions! ‘By design’ is the direct opposite of ‘by accident’ and ‘on purpose’ doesn’t have one, but ‘by accident’ is the closest thing, so we kind of use them as opposites.”

—Wishilikedhugs