(1) it's a regional variation to omit certain propositions in English. There are many language that have no prepositions at all, and successive waves of non-English immigrants or generations of public-school Latin and Greek education can influence regional or class distinction in grammatical usage. Witness the "never split an infinitive" developed by Oxford dons to try to artificially force English into a regular latin-based grammar (heh, see what I did there).

(2) The English language is dynamic and alive. For example, travelling through the United States you will hear additional auxiliary prepositions dangling off the end of perfectly complete sentences (an American will say "Where are you at?" when they mean "Where are you?"). It seems prepositions come and go.

Embrace the diversity.

So I have awakened and am sober, and apologize for such a weird post.
Accidental circumstances lead me to drink about twice as much as ever for about 3 times as long as ever (almost 10 hours!), all on a completely empty stomach. Not necessarily the furthest gone I have been but it ranks up there. Thank Todd God Jesus Hodgman that I took headache pills as a precautionary measure prior to falling asleep passing out because I can feel something that is trying to be a hang-over but isn’t quite being allowed to be thanks to the pills.

I wish this topic was not posted and I feel bad for having posted it (I do not deny that it reflects something that bugs me inside, but it is certainly not worth the trouble it took to type it—it doesn’t bother me that much), but I feel even worse for those who took the time to give real replies. Wasting my own time is one thing. Wasting the time of others is not acceptable. I profusely apologize.

Leaving it at that feels wrong though. To those who gave real replies I feel I owe a real response.
Besides, some of us here are professional writers for games, and while I (thankfully had enough sense even while drunk to have) billed this as a rant, the original post and some of its replies have shed real light on grammatical problems we all see far too often in what should be professional work.

"to prevent them taking over their nest,"
This sounds grammatically correct to me but it might depend on how you complete the sentence.

Grammatically it won’t change anything no matter how you end the sentence, but I would be interested in what kind of examples you could provide that make you feel that way.

"to stop the fire spreading."
Sounds like you want to stop a specific fire that is currently in the act of spreading.

In this case I think there is no way to misunderstand that that is the meaning.

"Scientists have figured out how to prevent meteors hitting Earth."
Suggests that scientists are working to prevent further impacts from a known group of meteors.

In this case you’ve understood the intended message, but not considered the actual structure of the sentence.
"Scientists have figured out how to prevent meteors hitting Earth."
"Scientists have figured out how to prevent meteors that are hitting Earth."
"Scientists have figured out how to prevent hitting-the-earth meteors."
All 3 of these variations have the exact same meaning (though the first one has no grammatical context).

"In order to protect her cubs starving she needs to-,"
Just seems completely wrong to me. I can't make this sentence work in my head without changing words around. I think because you're already talking about a specific set of cubs.

You should say the same thing about every example I provided (except the part about cubs, since my other examples did not include that).
Every single example gets the intended meaning when you add “from” at the appropriate spot. Otherwise, you get a literal meaning by changing the order of the words or by adding hyphens. None of the examples actually make sense as they are.

"I will stop a dog eating poison." or "I will prevent a dog eating poison."
This sounds to me like a person is trying to stop a poison that is out there somewhere in the world eating any dogs it finds. It just doesn't work for me.

Servant of the Lord correctly points out that in order for it to have that meaning it would require a hyphen.
"I will prevent a dog eating poison."
"I will prevent a dog-eating poison."
"I will prevent a dog-eating poison from coming into existence."
Of course, when spoken, you don’t “hear” the hyphen, so when listening to someone who is omitting “from” from many of his or her sentences you may easily misunderstand. I think it is best to be clear.

(2) The English language is dynamic and alive. For example, travelling through the United States you will hear additional auxiliary prepositions dangling off the end of perfectly complete sentences (an American will say "Where are you at?" when they mean "Where are you?"). It seems prepositions come and go.

Embrace the diversity.

I get your message but unfortunately you’ve just used exactly the worst possible example for me.
Living abroad for roughly a decade I speak multiple languages, and in each language, including my own native one, I’ve been okay with a lot of bastardization that takes place. In Japanese particles are omitted quite frequently although grammatically they should be there.
It’s one of those things that I accept that other people do but I will not do myself.

But you’ve just hit on the one bastardization that I absolutely hate the most from all 3.5 languages that I know. It in itself is not any worse than saying, “Where are you from?”, but there is personal trauma behind this one.
I was 5 years old the first time I told my mother to stop adding a superfluous “at” at the end of her sentences.
She gave me a spanking that day and on the following day she let me have a taste of her sweet potatoes and followed by threatening that if she gave me a plate of some that I would definitely be forced to eat it in order not to waste food. Then she gave me yam instead of sweet potatoes, which I literally barfed up on the 3rd attempt at swallowing.
She made me eat the barf too. A sick and twisted prank on a child who just wanted to listen to a little proper grammar.

So I get your message. But damn. You could literally not have picked a worse example for it.

Yeah maybe I should get myself some alcohol cabinet and drink until this post is gone my mind.

I C WUT U DID THEY'RE.
But really, while it is nice to have a small discussion on grammar in a place where grammar is actually related to some people’s jobs, one thing that should also be taken out of this topic is, “Drinking is bad, m’kay?”


L. Spiro

Servant of the Lord correctly points out that in order for it to have that meaning it would require a hyphen.
"I will prevent a dog eating poison."
"I will prevent a dog-eating poison."
"I will prevent a dog-eating poison from coming into existence."
Of course, when spoken, you don’t “hear” the hyphen, so when listening to someone who is omitting “from” from many of his or her sentences you may easily misunderstand. I think it is best to be clear.

Personally I think context solves this problem.

English is not my native language, but i think it's ok to skip some small words in english, i've seen that often, and i like it (none come to mind though). As long as you understand what the other is saying i don't see the problem here.

First world problems doesn't quite cover it.

Not anywhere as bad as when in other forum we started arguing about how some programming terms were translated into Spanish, which rather quickly derailed into arguing whether or not these kind of issues added to the language or destroyed it, and even reached the point to cite the RAE... only to find out they have been accepting some of those errors as valid in their dictionary. Yup.

If it's any consolation, people who get drunk and complain about grammar are the best kind of drunk. If I had parties, they're the kind I'd make sure get invited a second time.

I fully agree with kseh. The first 3 sentences he mentions sound "right" to me, while the last 2 sound completely wrong/off and are confusing.

Don't ask me why, I don't know.

You shouldn't drink so much with your liver disease, no?

(just worried)

Grammar is far fussier than anyone's actual use of it, and while there is generally a "preferred" construction it's rarely the only way to make one's meaning clear. Issues are more conspicuous in written communication, where punctuation and readers' biases influence how they interpret a statement with more granularity than would be the case if it were spoken.

For example, are you less irritated by "...to prevent her cubs' starving"? The plural possessive, while probably not technically correct, gives enough context to link the cubs to the starvation.

The use of "from" in these examples isn't meaningless, as it helps provide extra clarification of which noun is connected to which verb. It's in line with typical use of a preposition, but it's definitely a less-common (and harder to cleanly define) type or relationship to express with "from". It seems practically idiomatic to me, and if the modern convention were to not use "from" this way I don't think that communication would be much degraded. But I do think that you're right to defend it, and the people who omit it don't have a strong case.

If you really want a grammar/punctuation thing to be unhappy about, how about the drive to eliminate apostrophes? I truly don't understand the push.

If it's any consolation, people who get drunk and complain about grammar are the best kind of drunk. If I had parties, they're the kind I'd make sure get invited a second time.

I bet the greeks did that alot - drunk and arguing about grammar and philosophy. That's probably how Rome conquered them.