Pesky prepositions: which line do they go on?

I have worked as a subtitling tutor for a few years and figuring out where to split subtitle lines around prepositions is something that beginner subtitlers really struggle with. You wouldn’t think tiny words like “in” would cause so much stress, but they do, so I thought I’d write a blog post to explain them.

In most subtitling style guides, you are likely to see rules that ask you to split subtitles into two lines at natural points—after punctuation, before conjunctions and before prepositions—without separating:

• An article and noun

• A noun and adjective

• A first name and last name

• A subject pronoun and verb

• A prepositional verb and its preposition

• A verb and an auxiliary, reflexive pronoun or negation

Don’t be surprised if these rules are worded exactly the same way across different style guides. Most companies just copy-paste them from the publicly available Netflix guidelines here.

Why do we split subtitles like this?

These rules don’t just exist to make your job more complicated. Keeping grammatical units together makes the subtitle easier to read for the viewer, which in turn leads to a more enjoyable experience. For example, which do you think reads better?

The other day, I was walking my

dog in the park near my home.

The other day, I was walking

my dog in the park near my home.

Keeping the article (my) and noun (dog) together makes the text flow nicely from one line to the next. You’d probably do the same if you were making a graphic with some text. In typesetting, there are rules to avoid having short words hanging at the end of lines or short lines called “widows and orphans” pushed onto new pages. It’s a bit like that! When units are kept together, the text looks cleaner and the viewer’s reading experience isn’t disrupted.

Prepositions—where things get a little complicated

The example above with the article and noun is pretty clear, right? But I find the trickiest rule is the one about prepositions: do not separate a prepositional verb from its preposition BUT also split lines before prepositions. Huh?

Now, things can get pretty confusing when you start looking into the different English verb types. There are prepositional, phrasal and phrasal-prepositional multi-word verbs. They’re all used as an idiomatic alternative to another verb, so they’re probably going to come up quite a lot in audiovisual content. For example, “to drone on” instead of “to talk for a long time in a boring way” (like this blog post). Sometimes “phrasal verb” is used to refer to all three. If you do want to read about how they’re different, here’s a good guide.

I don’t think you need to be a grammar expert and remember all the different names, but you do need to be able to tell a preposition that modifies a verb from a “normal” preposition to split them “correctly”.

Prepositional verbs

A prepositional verb has (you guessed it) two parts, a verb and a preposition, which cannot be split grammatically. For example, the plane took off from the airport. “Off” modifies the verb “took” to give it a new meaning, i.e. to become airborne. You couldn’t say “The plane took from the airport off”.

If the prepositional verb “took off” was in a subtitle, it might be something like:

The plane took off

from the airport this afternoon.

This looks better than:

The plane took

off from the airport this afternoon.

Now, when it comes to line breaks, in my opinion, some prepositional verbs aren’t as clear-cut. For example, “look at”.

An example of “look at” in a subtitle would be:

I need to look at

the latest report again.

Instead of:

I need to look

at the latest report again.

Here’s the thing. I actually think the second example looks better. To me “at the latest report” makes sense as one grammatical unit, rather than “look at” + “the latest report”. But that is how you would split a prepositional verb according to the style guide.

Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are also verbs with a preposition, but in most cases, what makes them different is the preposition could appear later on in the sentence after the object. For example, “to take off” meaning to undress: You can say “I took off my coat” or “I took my coat off”. I would try to keep everything together (the verb, object and preposition), but because the preposition could appear after the object, it makes it slightly more likely that you’ll have to split the verb from the preposition if you’re putting a long sentence across two lines.

What about “normal” prepositions?

Let’s compare the above to “at” used as a normal preposition:

I have been working

at the company for 15 years.

This is better than splitting it like:

I have been working at

the company for 15 years.

Here, “working at” isn’t a prepositional verb. It’s just a verb followed by a preposition. You can use the verb “work” without the preposition, and it doesn’t change the meaning.

This doesn’t mean you always have to put the preposition on the bottom line. For example, if you have a lot of information in the second part of the sentence, you might break it as follows:

I have been working at the company

since I graduated from university.

Think of it as keeping grammatical units together rather than separating different units.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs

Phrasal-prepositional verbs have a verb, a particle and a preposition, for example, “to get on with”. When subtitling, things are getting pretty long at this point. You’re probably going to have to split into two lines. Here’s where I would do it:

I’ve been getting on
with everyone in my team.

Here, I’ve kept “getting on” together and put “with” on the bottom line as it belongs to the next part of the sentence, “everyone in my team”. In other words, you could also just say “We’ve been getting on” without the “with”, and it would still make sense.

To me, this looks better than:

I’ve been getting

on with everyone in my team.

Or…

I’ve been getting on with

everyone in my team.

Going against the rules

Here’s where I tell you to ignore all of the above. Just kidding, kind of. As we know, it is impossible to satisfy every rule when subtitling. Not breaking a prepositional verb from its preposition is just a guideline. Subtitling involves balancing lots of rules in the interest of readability. You should apply all your subtitling knowledge to make a decision and prioritise one rule over another if necessary.

I also don’t believe we should adhere to subtitling guides so strictly that we prioritise them over gut feeling. If something is hard to read yet follows the “rules”, then maybe that’s not the best place to split it (like my “look at” example earlier). There could be many factors that make a subtitle difficult to read that goes beyond the line breaks: what’s happening in the image, the type of vocabulary, context. It’s your job as a subtitler to make those judgments and this may involve going against the guidelines in certain cases.

English grammar is quite confusing. Instead of trying to figure out if something is a phrasal, prepositional or phrasal-prepositional verb, I would use your common sense. Which parts of the sentence go together? If they go together, try not to split them, unless it’s unavoidable. And if you’re just starting out in subtitling, try not to get too hung up on it. You’ll get used to recognising where to split sentences as you gain more experience. There are enough things to think about at first—shot change timings, frames, minimum gaps, reading speed. Try not to stress about tiny words like prepositions. The viewer is not going to scream “That prepositional-phrasal verb preposition should be on the first line!” at the TV—although a subtitler might.