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I'd like to ask a question regarding omission of prepositions on sentences. I know it could be quite common to do so in journalism but upon reading the sentence below, I'd like to ask if this one is still acceptable as it could be a bit confusing...

"West did not say Thursday whether he agreed with Trump’s political ideas​."

compared to

"West did not say on Thursday whether he agreed with Trump's political ideas."

It's part of an article, http://eikaiwa.dmm.com/beginnerdailynews/kanye-west-talks-politics/

knight1395
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  • Welcome to English Language and Usage. Are you asking about on before Thursday? Is it a headline? Where did you find this sentence? –  Dec 01 '16 at 11:09
  • You can comment to your own post if you use knight1395 user name. Please don't use other user names. If you created another user name by accident, you can visit the link, http://english.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts –  Dec 01 '16 at 11:21
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    There's absolutely nothing wrong with the sentence. (Although some people might write "agrees" rather than "agreed".) – Hot Licks Dec 01 '16 at 13:17
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    @HotLicks Whether there is anything wrong with the sentence might depend where you are. It wouldn't be acceptable in British English. – Spagirl Dec 01 '16 at 13:29
  • @Spagirl - Yep, Brits have weird ways of using "agree". – Hot Licks Dec 01 '16 at 13:31
  • The part "did not say Thursday" was awkward and is confusing for me, hence this query. I've never encountered omission of prepositions this way before. @HotLicks and @ Rathony – knight1395 Dec 02 '16 at 02:22
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    @knight1395 This is simply using a noun phrase as a time adverbial. See the duplicate please. He called the day before yesterday. I’ll tell you more about this next year. Three hours from now I’ll already have eaten. Tomorrow we’ll all go down to the park. Whether it’s yesterday, today, or tomorrow, or next week or last year, or any other day you please, these constructions need no “preposition” to express time because the nouns themselves tell you about the time. Still, some won’t work. – tchrist Dec 02 '16 at 02:25
  • In American English it is not just common but the accepted norm to use “Joe Soap said / did not say Thursday…”

    In British English it is always both understandable and wrong to use “Joe Soap said / did not say Thursday…”. We Brits demand “… on Thursday…” always.

    Thank you so much, tchrist, for showing me, after 50-odd years of wondering, how that difference arose!

    I haven’t grasped this well or even long enough to expound it properly, but to me you’ve made it obvious that “the day before yesterday”, et al, are not equivalent to Thursday, etc.

    … more…

     – Robbie Goodwin Dec 18 '16 at 00:58
  • I think it doesn’t matter whether these are noun phrases or time adverbials; what matters is specificity.

    “the day before yesterday”, et al, necessarily rely on context. Thursday, etc, might need some clarification to define this or next or last Thursday but that’s of a different level.

    I’d appreciate contributions here, please, and vaguely I’m thinking that while all time references might equate to people, perhaps relative phrases like “the day before yesterday” equate to individual people but specific phrases like Thursday equate to individual persons. Does that make any sense?

     – Robbie Goodwin Dec 18 '16 at 01:00
  • Some might indeed write "agrees" rather than "agreed" and it often matters not a jot; other times that difference is crucial.

    Most people don’t notice, let alone care, but paradoxically "agrees" will always be wrong, even though it usually expresses the true situation, while "agreed" will always be correct, although it is open to obvious misinterpretation… reading "agrees" no-one is likely mind whether the agreement takes place now, or when it was said. Reading "agreed”, many are likely to conclude that the speaker has changed his mind.

     – Robbie Goodwin Dec 18 '16 at 01:04

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